










THE 

RUNAWAY PLACE 


A MAT IDYL OF 
MANHATTAN 


BY 


WALTER PRICHARD EATON 


AND 


II 


ELISE MORRIS UNDERHILL 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1909 

z 


* V *•- 




Copyright, 1909 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


Published May , iQoq 



QUINN & BODEN COMPANY PRESS 
RAHWAY, N. J. 


|uBRAnY of CONGRESS I 
T Copies. Received 
MAY 22 
isjpvfigtit Entry j 



CONTENTS 


Chapter I 

PAGE 

In Which We Run away to the Year 

before Last 3 

Containing the Adventure of the Sending 
Boat and the Iliad of the Doughnut 

Chapter II 

The Magic Casement 39 

Containing The Other Side of the Hill and 
The Little Lady of Shalott, 

Chapter III 

Child Philip as Essayist .... 75 

Containing How to be Happy though in New 
York 

Chapter IV , 

A Bugler before the Wall v . . . 100 

Chapter V 

The Old Men Who Played Croquet . 122 

Containing The Tale of the Bibliomaniacal 
Cabbie 

iii 


IV 


CONTENTS 


Chapter VI 

The Gluebird and the Dutch Baby . 

Chapter VII 

Concerning Pollparrots, Porcelains, 
and the Hand of God . 

Chapter VIII 

The Touch of Schumann 

Chapter IX 

The Pessimistic Pelican .... 


PAGE 

160 

198 

227 

247 


THE RUNAWAY PLACE 


Around Saint Gaudens * golden group 
A little child pursues his hoop , 

Nor sees the twitching charger led 
By Victory , above his head; 

Of war and memories of war 
He knows not ; Life lies all before; 
Just now sufficient for the day 
It is to seize the moment’s play; 

A nd so around Saint Gaudens’ group 
The little child pursues his hoop. 

Beyond the child we blithely mark 
The long green garden of the Park , 
And hear a call that will not down 
For all the clamor of the town , 

A Piper’s call to run away 
Until the weary feet can play. 

Until the soul forgets its pain 
And dares to be a child again: 

The summoning grows fainter? Hark — 
The Piper’s marching up the Park l 


THE RUNAWAY PLACE 


CHAPTER I 

IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY TO THE 
YEAR BEFORE LAST 

■yiCTORY, her wings agleam, was lead- 
ing General Sherman southward down 
the Avenue with conquering stride. Over- 
head, the fresh young green that sprayed the 
trees hung like a soft veil, and over that, the 
blue of a May morning. The gay proces- 
sion of carriages rolled by on the asphalt. 
The green hip-roof of the new Plaza Hotel 
shone in the sun, far aloft above the bare 
cliff-wall of the building, which suggests curi- 
ously a man without eyebrows. Nurse-maids 
and children were alive in the paths as far 
as the eye could see. And Philip Stoughton, 
pausing by Saint Gaudens’ bronze to look 


4 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

about him, was well content. And why not? 
The belated Spring had come at last with a 
rush and burst of leaf and blossom; and he 
was out of a job, to enjoy it at his boundless 
leisure. 

Philip Stoughton cherished no delusions as 
to “ the dignity of labor.” He admitted its 
too frequent necessity, but further he would 
not go. No activity, he would have told you, 
that was not so joyfully indulged in as to be- 
come play, could be called dignified, because 
it is the right of every person to be happy, 
and to compel that person into unwilling or 
non-enthusiastic activity argues an essential 
lack of dignity in the scheme of things. In 
other words, he would have spoken of the 
indignity of labor. “ The child and the ar- 
tist,” he would have added, “ because their 
activities are the most spontaneous, are the 
most dignified members of society.” 

It is hardly necessary now, perhaps, to 
state that Philip Stoughton was a boyish 
young man who aspired to a literary reputa- 
tion. 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 5 

However, one has to yield a little to a 
theory, held so strongly that it induces the 
theorizer to forego, not only his “ undigni- 
fied ” daily toil, but the weekly reward there- 
for. Stoughton had signed his name to the 
pay-roll of a down-town firm for the last 
time that very morning, and now he stood 
beneath the gleaming, triumphant bronze, as 
care-free as a bird, his eye, to be sure, alert 
for “copy,” (for in his happiest or idlest 
moments, the artist’s instinct is alive), but in 
his heart longing for a playmate. Spring was 
all about him — even the asphalt smelled of 
it. The long, green garden of the Park 
stretched invitingly northward. He tilted 
his hat back the fraction of an inch on his 
forehead, and swung in up the path. 

By just what process of suggestion the 
ducks in Lake Swan Boat made him think of 
Mozart, it would perhaps be hard to guess. 
There were ducks floating gracefully in the 
water, and ducks waddling gawkily on the 
bank. One even came grunting and wab- 
bling up to him, in dumb appeal for food. As 


6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

it stood there in stupid supplication, it sug- 
gested Masetto — yes, that was it, Masetto, 
while the lords and ladies danced the minuet, 
and Don Giovanni stole his love away! That 
was the picture which fired the train of sug- 
gestion : from a duck to Mozart was the jump 
of an instant. Stoughton walked on whistl- 
ing, and what he whistled was, “ La ci 
darem.” He had finished it once, and was be- 
ginning it over again, in love with the tune, 
as he pulled up an incline to a rustic summer- 
house. He had finished the Don’s first lus- 
cious, tempting phrase (if the real Don Juan 
went about singing tunes like that Leporello’s 
list is quite intelligible!) and paused for 
breath, when from the summer-house the tune 
was taken up in a frailer whistle, and Zerlina 
made known her hesitation. 

He bounded up the path into the rustic shel- 
ter, and looked eagerly about. Nobody was 
there save a girl, who sat with her back to 
the southern sun, looking idly out across the 
Park. She paid no attention to him, she gave 
no sign that she was aware of his presence. 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 7 

He stood facing her, in the center of the 
summer-house, and whistled the next phrase 
of the duet, the Don’s second theme. There 
was no reply. The girl still looked idly out 
over the Park. 

“ Must I do the whole duet myself? ” said 
he. 

The girl brought her gray eyes slowly 
around to focus upon him with a cool, steady 
glance. “ Sir,” she said. 

Stoughton laughed. “ OH, come now,” he 
remarked cheerfully, “ there are six good 
reasons why you shouldn’t adopt that 
attitude.” 

The girl was still silent. She was on the 
defensive, and a bit frightened, it seemed, at 
what she had undoubtedly brought upon her- 
self. Whether she had intended to bring it 
upon herself was what most interested Stough- 
ton just then, and that was what, he knew, 
would be most difficult to find out. 

“ Don’t you want to know what any of the 
reasons are? ” he asked. 

“ Perhaps not,” said the girl. 


8 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ Good ! Then I’ll tell you,” said he, hold- 
ing up his left hand, fingers spread, and tally- 
ing off the reasons with the other. “ First, 
we both love Mozart, and that constitutes a 
spiritual bond. Second, we are both young 
and not unattractive (pardon my qualified 
flattery of you, since the phrase also applies 
to me!), but alone, which Nature never in- 
tended young and attractive persons of oppo- 
site sexes to be. Third, it’s a magazine short- 
story tradition that we should get acquainted 
in Central Park, so we must in the cause of 
literature. Fourth, I’m only ten years old to- 
day, and want somebody to play with, oh, 
drefful bad! Fifth, it’s a May morning. 
And, sixth, you’ve put your foot — I mean 
your whistle — into it now, and cannot retreat 
with honor.” 

The girl flushed a little under her red hat, 
and a barrier dropped from her eyes. Watch- 
ing her keenly, he saw it drop, and she knew 
he saw it, and flushed deeper. She was a 
small woman, a trifle pale and tired as if from 
toil, and there was something almost wistful 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 9 

in her face as she inquired, though smiling, 
“ What was that fourth reason? ” 

Stoughton scratched his head. “ Dear me, 
I got them off so fast — oh, yes ! — fourth, I’m 
only ten this morning, and want somebody to 
play with dreffully.” 

“ You’re really only ten? ” she inquired. 

“ Really.” 

“ How did you manage it? ” 

“ Oh, it’s easy,” he laughed. “ First, you 
get spring fever; then you realize that man 
wasn’t made to work, but to play, and throw 
up your job. And then you run away to Cen- 
tral Park.” He swept his hand toward the 
north. “ This is the great Run-away Place, 
right in the heart of town,” he added. “ You 
step into a picture-book world, and anything 
may happen. You see, something has hap- 
pened already! You are ten years old be- 
cause you believe again in wonders, and, lo ! 
— a playmate. Come on back with me, little 
playmate, to the year before last! ” 

And he swept her a low picture-book bow 
and held out his hand. 


io THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


The girl looked at him with a little catch 
in her breath. “ The year before last! ” she 
said. “ Oh, more than that ! Take me back 
more than that! ” 

“ You can’t come at all if you’re literal,” 
he laughed. “ But I know you’re not. Your 
name, by the way, is Marie.” 

The girl stood up and took a step toward 
him. Then she paused, plucked at her skirt 
with one hand, hung her head, a finger in her 
mouth, and asked in a baby voice, “ What’s 
your name, ’ittle boy? ” 

“ Minth’s Philip,” he lisped, falling gaily 
into the game. “ Turn on ’n thee the thwan 
boats.” 

But she had grown up again, and shook her 
head gravely. “ No, little boy,” she said, 
“ that wouldn’t do at all. You caught me off 
my guard for a minute. See, I admit it. Pm 
foolish, if you choose, or just like the others. 
But you will be a nice boy, and run away 
now.” 

“ I will be a nice boy, and do nothing of 
the sort,” he answered. “ Nor will I say, or 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY n 


think, you’re like the others — which isn’t true. 
Nor will I argue with you. There is nothing 
to argue. Either you want to play with me 
or you don’t want to play with me, and that’s 
all children know or need to know. Instead, 
I’ll answer for you. Answer : you do want to 
play with me.” He fell once more into the 
game. “ Turn on ! ” he cried, imperiously 
stamping his foot. 

The girl looked at him a moment, very 
solemnly. Then she smiled, gave her head a 
kind of defiant little toss, and they moved out 
of the summer-house together. 

“ Mind you, Philip,” said she, “ I’m com- 
ing because you’re only ten to-day. Your 
other reasons were no good at all.” 

“ Not even the last, Marie? ” he inquired. 

“ Oh, that least of all,” she said with a 
laugh. 

“ May I grow up again for a moment? ” 
said he, as they skipped down the path. 

“ Why?” she asked. 

“ I want to argue that last point with you.” 

“ You may not — to-day,” she answered. 


i2 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


“ Good! ” he cried. “ It’s a promise! I 
don’t want to now ! ” 

The girl turned very red for a child of 
ten, and Philip was triumphant. Southward 
smoked the city; the great apartment houses 
faced frowning down; the lofty hotel gables 
gleamed in the sun; somewhere there was a 
smothered rattle and roar of traffic; and 
northward, into the welcome green of the 
Park, up tree-lined paths, and past flowers 
and green grass, they sped — two children 
searching for adventure ! 

* * * * * 

And by and by, oh, a long, long way off 
from Fifty-ninth Street, where the big grown- 
up world ends, they came upon a mighty lake, 
and then befell them a wonderful adventure, 
which is known as 

ZTbe BCwenture of tbe Senbtafl ffioat* 

[ Gentle Reader , do you know what is a Sending 
Boat ? A Sending Boat is a mighty , marvelous craft 
to bear one into Old Romance , and you learn 
all about it (if you care to learn more than is here 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 13 

set down) in a certain true fairy tale made by Wil- 
liam Morris , and called “ The Water of the Won- 
drous Isles ” It was because Child Philip and 
Child Marie discovered that each had read and 
loved this book , that they elected to play Sending 
Boat , which has to be played , of course, in Early 
English . And if you wonder at the Early English 
which here follows, do not blame us. We did not 
write it, as presently you will learn, if you are 
patient .] 

Whilom, as tells the tale, came two chil- 
dren, a man child hight Philip and a girl 
child hight Marie, (who was so fair to look 
upon that many passersby turned to gaze be- 
neath the red hat that sat full saucily upon 
her head) — came these children unto the 
banks of a mighty lake, to a spot hard by a 
boat house, where were many boats that a man 
might hire for a space by the payment of a 
silver coin. And so they stayed before the 
boat house, and right eagerly did they look 
out upon the water, gleaming in the sun, 
whereon swans sailed gracefully. Eke were 
there both white swans and black swans with 


i 4 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

red bills, and little brown ducks beside. And 
there were boats moored all in a row by the 
bank; and of canoes a few; but mostly the 
boats were row-boats. 

Then spake the child hight Philip, Yon 
water is the Water of the Wondrous Isles, 
and mayhap on the farther shore, a long day’s 
journey hence, shall we find the little House by 
the Wood, and therein the Black Knight and 
Birdalone. Shall we adventure forth upon 
the deep? 

And answered the child hight Marie : Oh, 
yes, let’s hire a canoe and go find Birdalone ! 
I’ve always wanted to meet her! 

Despite, spake Philip, your strange lan- 
guage, which I scarce may understand, I deem 
you give consent, and would fain look upon 
the sweet form of Birdalone. Come, we will 
learn the secret of the Sending Boat. 

So they went before an olden carle, whose 
eyes were weak and watery, with great spec- 
tacles over them, and the beard of him was 
white and long; and of him they bought a 
little check, for he was full short of sight for 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 15 

all his spectacles, and knew not they were but 
children. Another carle, who stood by the 
landing, took of them this check, and made 
question of them thus: Do you know how to 
handle a canoe? They tip over easy. 

And the man-child was about to wax 
mightily wroth, but Child Marie laid restrain- 
ing hand upon his arm, whispering : Thy sense 
of humor, Boy Philip, would’st thou mislay 
it? 

So Boy Philip put his wrath away and 
quoth most humbly, Sir, I think I do. 

And then he would have made request for 
a knife or some sharp thing to prick his arm 
withal till the blood should come, that he 
might smear the Sending Boat bow and stern. 
But he reflected how the carle wot not at all 
that it was a Sending Boat, and so might he 
be hard put to find reason in the request. 
Therefore he accepted a paddle, and the two 
children fared forth over the deep water. 

But when they had passed around the point 
of rocks hight Chip-sparrow Point, for that 
they saw in a bush just over the water’s edge 


1 6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


two chip-sparrows struggling with the prob- 
lem of domestic architecture (Child Marie 
affirmed they could not agree where to put 
the pantry) , Philip laid down the paddle, and, 
pricking his arm with a hatpin right quickly 
supplied by Child Marie, smeared with the 
blood which flowed, the Sending Boat both 
bow and stern, and therewith he spake these 
words of the magic spell : 


The Child Philip’s blood now 
Hast thou drunk, stern and bow, 

Awake, then, awake! 

And the westward way take : 

The way of the Wender forth into the Park, 
For the will of the Sender is bent on a lark. 


Then Child Philip dipped his paddle 
lightly in astern, that he might, perchance, as 
he explained, steer the boat clear of rock or 
reef, and breathless they waited for the spell 
to work. The Sending Boat stirred, and then 
shot out swiftly across the waters of Black 
Swan Bay. Westward, far off, they saw 
gleaming mountains, level-topped and smok- 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 17 

ing like tired volcanoes. On one hand a great 
wood came down to the very edge of the 
water, and therein was neither wood-reeve nor 
way-warden to be seen, and men held it to be 
mighty great and terrible to adventure in. 
But the children in the Sending Boat feared 
naught of it, out on the water, nor did they 
fear to see, over the top of Chip-sparrow 
Point, the roof of the boat house fade from 
sight. They set their faces westward over 
the Shining Water, and the Sending Boat 
sped on. 

By and by it shot under the great arching 
span of a bridge that straddled from one bank 
clear to the other with a single leap, and was 
hight Pansy Bridge, for that at either end, in 
jars of carven stone, were pansy flowers grow- 
ing, with the faces, if you look at them quite 
closely, of little men and women, it may be 
of kings and queens, for mostly they wear 
purple. And beyond Pansy Bridge the lake 
spread out most mightily, so that the children 
were sore put to see the shores on either side, 
or whither they were going, save that on the 


1 8 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

right lay a green eyeot, and ducks thereon 
making a great quacking. 

Ever westward sped the Sending Boat, and 
anon they were ware of a shore and trees 
thereon, and amid the trees a little hut stand- 
ing, so that they cried out as it were with one 
voice: Birdalone’s house by the wood! 
Then the Sending Boat came to a stop close 
to the shore, but not so close as that her bow 
keel grazed the gravel, for within the boat, 
under the rail, was a blue sign bearing the 
mystic characters: 


NOTICE 

The Department of Parks 
Orders that Persons Using this Boat 
MAKE NO LANDINGS 
Except at the Boat House. 

Now these characters meant that a spell 
had been laid upon the boat aforetime, by a 
mighty band of magicians hight Park Com- 
missioners, for that it could only make land- 
ing at the boat house of the olden carle, he of 
the spectacles. 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 19 

So then, as ye may well guess, Child Marie 
and Child Philip did right eagerly turn in 
their places and gaze at Birdalone’s house, 
searching if they might discover Birdalone 
herself, or any sight of her. But naught they 
saw at first, save a great monster hight collie- 
dog in those parts, which came down to the 
bank, barking most lustily at them; and a 
little smoke from the chimney, that savored 
of onions. Whereat Child Marie’s nose went 
up, and thus she spake : Nay, Birdalone is not 
there, methinks, else would the mid-day meal 
be not so churlishly savored. 

But Child Philip answered naught, being 
wise, since in his heart to him the savor of 
boiled onions was good. Yet he doubted not, 
however, that Child Marie was right. And 
anon came forth from the hut a fell glower- 
ing dame of many summers, to hang a dish 
clout on the line : so then they wit well that 
Birdalone was not there, having fled, mayhap, 
to Green Eyeot, or unto the far parts across 
the gleaming waters. 

Sore disappointed were they as they spake 


ao THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


unto the Sending Boat again the spell, whereat 
it stirred and turned and shot out over the 
deep. But Child Marie was not down- 
hearted. Who knows, quoth she, but we 
may yet find Birdalone, or at least fall in 
with some strange adventure ere the voyage 
be done? 

And even as she spake, there came floating 
to them over the water a strange somewhat 
they deemed at first a tiny log. But when 
they brought it dripping forth, they wot it was 
a roll of manuscript bound with a band of 
rubber, and how it came there neither one nor 
the other could tell, though it seemed some 
careless manchild of the guild hight authors 
must have dropped it from his pocket on the 
edge of the water, or it might be from a boat, 
and wot not of his loss. 

Child Marie shook therefrom the water, 
and with gingerly care to hold it far from the 
dainty gown in which she was dight, undid 
it on the floor of the Sending Boat. Eke was 
there no author’s name therein, but the tale 
was done neatly into print on a machine hight 


21 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 

a typewriter, and albeit the ink had run and 
blurred in places, for that the water had 
soaked in among the leaves, Child Marie 
could read it well enough. And as the Send- 
ing Boat glided across the Shining Water and 
under the banks of the Great Forest, she read 
this strange tale to Child Philip, which was 
called, according to the author who had set 
it down, 

XZbe UUaD of tbe 2>ou0bnut, 

“ No, I shall not go there again this sum- 
mer,” said Penrose, emphatically. 

“ Why not? ” asked Cutting. “ I thought 
you regarded it as the most nearly ideal sum- 
mer resort in Maine, which means anywhere, 
according to your bigoted view. Sometimes 
I suspect you of being a Yank.” 

“ I did, I do,” Penrose answered, ignoring 
the comment. “ But the presence of certain 
other people who regard it in the same light 
makes it intolerable. Until I hear that the 
old crowd frequent it no more, I shall seek 
pastures new to tan in. They used to be such 


22 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

a congenial crowd, too, till last summer. The 
doughnut is to blame.” 

“ The doughnut ! ” exclaimed Cutting. 
“ How in the name of goodness did the 
doughnut figure? ” 

“How did it not figure ?” said Penrose, 
sadly. “ It is a long tale, a melancholy tale. 
But I will try to tell you. 

“ To begin at the beginning, as the novel- 
ists used to do in the good old days of the 
three-decker, when people had time to read, 
you must know that the great farmhouse and 
its adjoining ‘ cottage ’ in Bethel have long 
been taken each summer by almost the same 
crowd of people. Summer after summer they 
have tramped together up the mountain be- 
hind the house, and picnicked on its top, in 
sight of the grand sweep of the Presidential 
Range. Summer after summer they have 
journeyed to Gorham, and made the trip up 
Washington through Adams’ Ravine. Sum- 
mer after summer they have gone through 
Grafton Notch on buckboards to the Range- 
ley Lakes, and sniffed with annual exclama- 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 23 

tions of joy the mingled odor of pines and 
fresh water. And summer after summer 
evening they have sat in the big parlor, and 
listened while one read aloud, or played cards, 
or discussed topics of interest, in the most 
idyllic spirit of brotherly and sisterly love. 
The food was good, the beds good, the com- 
pany good, the air and scenery superlative. 
It was the ideal. 

“ And it would have remained so for all 
time if the doughnut had not entered last 
July, like the apple on Olympus, to cause 
schism, disruption, open hostility. 

“ You see, the party was about equally di- 
vided geographically. A score of us came 
from New York or Southeastern Connecti- 
cut, and a score, the rest of the crowd, came 
from the vicinity of Boston. There was 
a music critic in the New York division, who 
once wrote a book on Wagner, in the big 
front bedroom of the main house, and had 
to keep that room forever after because any- 
body else who tried it had bad dreams. He 
and I were leaders on our side in the con- 


24 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

troversy that arose. I don’t say this in a 
boasting spirit; far from it. I have always 
been too ready to debate on all occasions, and 
this time I paid high for my fault. But truth 
compels me to admit that I was a leader. I 
felt there was a principle at stake. 

“ The Boston party, naturally enough, was 
led by a woman and a very young and self- 
assertive young man just out of Harvard. 
The woman was a spinster, not your comic- 
paper Boston type, but a stout, handsome, 
witty, well-dressed creature that one sus- 
pected had remained single from choice — un- 
til one had learned her uncomfortable con- 
troversial temperament. The young man was 
beneath notice, one would like to say; only 
one cannot. He would never stay beneath 
notice. He was the best swimmer, the best 
tennis and golf player, the best mountain 
climber, the most accommodating rascal to 
the women, the best reader of an evening, 
the best looking male in the place; at least, 
so the ladies thought. But ladies are never 
good judges of masculine beauty! If he 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 25 

hadn’t been there, I shouldn’t have taken the 
opposite side so bitterly as I did and then, 
perhaps, I might have ■” 

“ You might have what? ” said Cutting. 

“ Well, I might have somebody to darn 
my stockings for me, if you must know,” said 
Penrose. “ She was of the Boston party, had 
been to Bethel every summer since she was a 
little child. I saw her grow up into the finest 
girl, oh, Cutting, the finest, altogether most 
adorable girl you ever set eyes on! Why, if 
Bethel were in the middle of the desert, it 
would be a summer paradise — with her there. 
And I came to love her, as every man of sense 
has to. I told her so, one day down by the 
Sunday River, and she laughed and skipped 
a stone three times, and I said she made my 
heart skip the same way; and she laughed 
still harder, and said I was an old dear. 
Think of that, you brute, and stop your own 
laughing! She called me an ‘old dear,’ 
though I’m not thirty-five, or not much more ! 
And she wouldn’t say any more then; but I 
was happy and hopeful. I knew she never 


i6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


called that young Harvard upstart an 4 old 
dear.’ ” 

44 I hope not,” said Cutting. 44 They re- 
sent such familiarity — Harvard men. But 
how about the doughnuts? ” 

“ I’m coming to them. Well, one day we 
had crullers on the table; you know, those 
round rings of dough, fried in a kettle, that 
aren’t half bad with coffee — if you have the 
digestive apparatus of an ostrich. I asked 
the Boston spinster to pass me 4 the crullers.’ 

“ 4 You mean the doughnuts, don’t you? ’ 
said she, sweetly. 

“ Now, I know pretty generally what I 
mean, and I don’t care to be picked up in 
my speech by a woman. 4 I mean the crul- 
lers,’ said I, haughtily. 4 1 see no doughnuts 
on the table.’ 

44 4 And I see no crullers,’ said she. 4 1 
cannot be expected to pass what I don’t see, 
in other words, to handle the intangible.’ 

44 4 The intangible is often visible, though,’ 
said the Harvard upstart, butting in. 4 Wit- 
ness the view from our mountain top.’ 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 27 

44 4 Yes,’ said the music critic, 4 and you can 
always be relied on to pass it. You’re a 
Bromide, and you quote Bangs. I suppose 
you’re aware that your illustration is taken 
from the mouth of the Cheerful Idiot? ’ 

44 4 You can never claim the adjective,’ re- 
torted the Harvard upstart, with his usual in- 
solence. 4 But we wander from the subject. 
Are those things on the table, which Mr. Pen- 
rose desires, doughnuts or crullers, that’s the 
question. And I’ll answer it. They are 
doughnuts.’ 

44 4 They are not,’ snapped the music critic. 
4 They are crullers. Anybody who knows 
anything, knows that doughnuts are spherical 
in shape, solid, and made of different ma- 
terial. Your education on this point, as on 
some others I might mention, has been sadly 
neglected.’ 

44 4 Why don’t you lay the blame on the 
elective system? ’ asked the Upstart. 4 Now, 
I don’t know how Wagner would compose a 
doughnut motif — save that it would be sad 
and low — but I do know that a cruller is six 


28 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

inches long, composed of two twists of dough 
curled about each other. A doughnut is what 
we have on the table.’ 

“ And here the discussion became general. 
To a unit, the New York and Connecticut 
people took my side, affirming that the objects 
offered an the table were crullers, and that a 
doughnut was a spherical mass of raised ma- 
terial, solid, or containing a bit of jelly. The 
twist affairs were, if they were anything, a 
variety of crullers, we were willing to concede. 
The Boston and Massachusetts party, with 
similar unanimity, stoutly maintained that 
doughnuts were the ring affairs on the table, 
that crullers were the twists; and they would 
not concede that real doughnuts had any 
standing in court whatever. Most of them 
had never even seen or heard of the real 
doughnut. I never knew till then how pro- 
vincial Boston and Massachusetts, if they are 
two places, really are. 

“ The controversy was carried outside the 
house, into the solemn stillness of the moun- 
tain twilight. We forgot to watch the sun- 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY a 9 

set shadows creep over the high hills. We 
forgot to take our evening stroll through the 
dewy meadows. We forgot to read or to 
play cards. All that evening, divided into 
two camps, we discussed with warmth that 
gradually developed into positive ill-feeling, 
the tremendous question : ‘ What is a dough- 
nut? ’ 

“ The Harvard Upstart thought he had 
clinched the whole question when he quoted 
the magazine advertisement taken from a 
still more ancient proverb: ‘To make a 
doughnut, take a hole and put some dough 
around it.’ But this was met with a storm 
of rebuttal. Proverbs are notoriously 
wrong; the proverb was probably coined by 
some ignorant Bostonian; a magazine will 
print any falsity, so long as it is paid for; 
names may shift their meaning, and the dis- 
cussion is over the present definition of the 
term: and the like. 

“ When we retired that night, I was in a 
hot rage, which was by no means cooled 
when I saw the Harvard Upstart bidding 


3 o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Her goodnight on the veranda of the ‘ cot- 
tage 1 next to the main house, where I slept. 
She had taken but little part in the contro- 
versy, but her sympathies were plainly on the 
mistaken side. 

“ The following day, the discussion was 
resumed at breakfast, and was aggravated by 
a large plateful of the offending food left 
over from the night before. We had been 
so excited then that we had neglected to eat 
it up. Already a noticeable division of the 
household had begun. When we set off for 
a tramp that morning, the cruller party, 
headed by myself and the music critic, wanted 
to climb Bear Mountain. The doughnut con- 
tingent got a fool notion into their heads that 
it would be better to tramp across the river in 
the meadows, though the day was ridiculously 
hot. The result was that we each went our 
separate way. I was too stuffy to give in, 
and so were the rest of our side, and I wit- 
nessed the melancholy spectacle of the Up- 
start setting out with Her at his side, while 
I walked in the opposite direction, with a 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 31 

simpering young thing from Danbury, who 
bored me till I was positively rude. 

“ Well, the hostilities kept up, fed by re- 
newed controversy every time crullers were 
served at table, which was rather often. If 
we played foursomes, it was always two 
Doughnuts against two Crullers. Croquet 
and tennis games became tests of merit be- 
tween the parties to the great controversy. 
We no longer travelled in a big bunch, but 
in two bunches; if the Crullers went fishing, 
the Doughnuts went the other way for ber- 
ries. If the Doughnuts wanted a drive, they 
found the Crullers had engaged all the teams, 
and invited enough extra guests from the 
hotel up in the village to use them. 

“ A new arrangement of seating at table 
soon worked itself out, and across the inter- 
vening space we positively glared at each 
other, like Guelfs andGhibellines. The music 
critic grew more ill-natured, the Boston spin- 
ster more caustic in her remarks about New 
York and New Yorkers generally. I became 
more pigheaded and stuffy than ever, ready to 


32 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

take the opposite side on any question. Only 
the Harvard Upstart retained his cheerful, 
disgusting good nature, a fact not hard to 
understand when he enjoyed Her companion- 
ship so much more than I did, now that the 
camp was divided against itself. 

“ Well, to make a long story short, the 
time came for me to go back to the city, and 
I corralled Her one evening at twilight, in 
spite of the efforts of the Upstart to thwart 
me, and led her down to our little cosey cor- 
ner on the bank of the Sunday River. The 
deep pool where the river broadened out was 
still as glass, and mirrored the mountain tops 
and the evening star, which laid its silvery 
track right to our feet. It was the hushed, 
solemn hour of the day, when the soul should 
be at peace, and love supreme. 

“ I addressed her passionately. I told her 
again of my love, of my devotion; I reminded 
her that on this very spot a month before she 
had been at least kind to me, giving me hope. 
And I asked her for a final answer before I 
went back — an answer that would make me 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 33 

either the happiest man in the world or the 
most miserable. All the eloquence that was 
in me, in the hour, in the occasion, I poured 
forth.” 

“ Quite in the approved fashion,” said 
Cutting, in his dry way. “ And what did she 
say?” 

“ She said,” continued Penrose mournfully, 
“ that she had loved me a little — that per- 
haps she had loved me more than a little, and 
might have come to love me enough to marry 
me — before the doughnut-cruller controversy. 
But that controversy, she declared, had 
shown me to her what I am — stubborn, bent 
on my own way, not open to reason. Then 
she looked up at the darkening hills, paused 
a moment, while the great hush of the world 
poured around us, and said softly: ‘If you 
will admit that you’re wrong, if you will ac- 
knowledge that a doughnut is a round ring, 
such as we have at table here, I’ll — I’ll marry 
you still.’ ” 

Cutting laughed. 

“ Don’t laugh, you brute,” said Penrose. 


34 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ It was no laughing matter, I assure you. 
It was ridiculous, if you will. Was ever a 
man put in a more ridiculous position than 
that? But it was not laughable. I loved her 
too much.” 

“ I still think it laughable,” said Cutting. 
“ It was so easy to win her, after all.” 

“What!” cried Penrose. “Easy? Do 
you think I would give up a principle for a 
woman’s foolish whim? I admit that for a 
moment I was tempted. She looked so lovely 
there in the dusk. And I loved her so ! But 
I was not tempted long. I told her that if 
she really loved me she would make no such 
ridiculous demand as that. She would not 
ask a man to sacrifice his principles. I told 
her, in short, that I could not accede to her 
request. It was a test she had no right to re- 
quire. 

“ She said, t Very well,’ quite calmly, 
though I think she was a little pale, and rose 
to her feet. At that instant the solemn hush 
was broken by the call of a bird in the thicket 
close to us. The insects, as by prearranged 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 35 

signal, began their evening hum ; and the wind 
sprang up, rippling the pool, so that the star 
track went out in the soft commotion. 

“ We walked back to the house in silence, 
and she retired at once. The next morning I 
left. As I climbed into the rig to go to the 
station, I saw Her and the Upstart setting 
forth on a fishing trip.” 

“ Well,” said Cutting, after a long silence. 
“ You have given her up for good, eh? And 
the Upstart, did she marry him? ” 

“ She 

and here the tale stopped abruptly, for that 
the water had washed the last sheet away, or 
mayhap a water bird had pecked thereat, 
under the impression that reading maketh a 
full duck. Child Marie looked and looked, 
making search among all the other sheets, but 
no ending could she find. 

Alas, cried Child Philip, the tale leaves us 
overmuch in doubt, for I would fain know 
if by chance he won the fair dame he longed 
for, or if he stood steadfast to his error. The 


36 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Lady or the Doughnut, might it now be 
called. 

Then Child Marie: Error, say you? Nay, 
it was she who was in error, though me- 
thinks it like he longed for her so sore that 
he gave way to her belief. Wit ye well, 
Child Philip, those round rings of dough 
aforesaid are crullers. 

Wit ye well, cried Child Philip angrily, 
they are not! They are everywhere hight 
doughnuts by all who know. 

Crullers! said Child Marie. 

Doughnuts ! shouted Child Philip. 

And the Sending Boat shook and was near 
to capsizing. 

Be they what they may, quoth Child Marie, 
with a sudden gurgle, I would I had one, or 
maybe two, this minute. 

And Child Philip, laughing too, cried out : 
Would I had a full dozen, fresh from the 
frying kettle: for long have we adventured, 
and the hour of midday has passed. And 
thus was disasterous controversy averted. 

So then he sped the Sending Boat for 


IN WHICH WE RUN AWAY 37 

home, and under Pansy Bridge they glided, 
and the roof of the boat house loomed in 
sight. Past Chip-sparrow Point, up to the 
dock, sped the Sending Boat, where the carle 
awaited them to help them forth, and the 
other carle, the olden one, still sat at his little 
window to take of adventurers their piece of 
silver. Nor did he discover even now — being 
weak eyed and old, as aforesaid — that they 
were but children. 

So they walked to the gate of the Run- 
away Place, and Child Philip, with many 
words and much pleading, won from his com- 
panion a promise that on the morrow she 
would once more meet him in the summer- 
house that crowns the mount known to those 
who are wise in Park-lore as Mount Mozart. 
Then parted they, not, ye may guess, without 
a backward glance and a flash of the eyes. 
And Child Philip, left alone upon the corner, 
looked about him and saw that men and 
women were going to and fro with serious 
faces, intent upon their toil, whereat he smiled 
softly, quietly, to himself. 


38 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

[ Here endeth the tale which is called , Of the 
Adventure of the Sending Boat , which was set 
down by Child Philip that evening in his chambers 
to be read in after-while to Child Marie , together 
with the manuscript which is called , The Iliad of 
the Doughnut , found floating on the Shining 
Water.] 


CHAPTER II 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 

^y^ICTORY was still leading General 
Sherman southward with conquering 
stride, under a blue May sky, when Philip 
Stoughton entered the Park the following 
morning. The gay carriages rolled by, the 
green roof shone in the sun. Yet there was 
something wistful in his mood; and as he be- 
gan the ascent to the summer-house, the im- 
mortal minuet came with a certain sadness 
from his lips. He paused to listen. The 
girl was answering him from her seat under 
the rustic shelter. Her whistle was faint, a 
woman’s whistle, so faint that he lost it now 
and again in the screams of nearby children, 
the call of birds, the rattle of traffic from 
the roadway. It, too, was sad — sad as every 
perfect tune must be when caught amid the 
more discordant noises of the world — sad 


39 


4 o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

with its own perfection. Yet just now it was 
sad with a certain added wistfulness, so that 
he knew her mood, too, had changed. 

“ Good-morning, Marie,” he said. “ You 
have come I ” 

She looked at him brightly, yet gravely. 
“ Did you doubt that I would? ” she asked. 

“ I hoped that you would,” said he. “ I 
wrote a little story about the Sending Boat 
last night on the chance that we would play 
together again and I might read it to you. 
But I wasn’t sure that the Run-away Place 
would mean enough to you to overcome the 
sort of scruples most women have.” 

The girl smiled. “ Like Zerlina,” she 
said, “I would and yet I would not! But, 
also like Zerlina, you see Pm here ! Perhaps, 
Boy, you can’t guess how much the Run- 
away Place means to me.” 

He looked at her closely. “ Wistful little 
Marie,” he said, and there was almost a 
caress in his voice, as his glance fell steadily 
on her pale face. “Wistful little Marie! I 
don’t know what it is; I don’t want to know 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 41 

— now. All in good time, you will tell me. 
But now we will go back into the day before 
yesterday again, only we shall not run to-day, 
I guess, but saunter slowly and let old mem- 
ories of childhood have their way with us. 
Shall we do it that way? ” 

The girl looked at him gravely. “ Yes,” 
she murmured, “ we will do it that way. But 
how did you know that was the way I wanted 
to do it this morning? ” 

“ I’m a boy — you forget,” he answered. 
“ Boys understand many things that are 
sealed to them later, which is why grown-ups 
pluck so clumsily amid the heart-strings of a 
friend.” 

“ But how did you know about the mem- 
ories ? ” 

“Ah! that’s because you are a K.S.,” he 
smiled, “ or because I am a K.S. — which 
means Kindred Spirit, you know. All K.S.’s 
love, in their quieter moments, to indulge in 
‘ minute and tender retrospect,’ to go back 
slowly over the paths of their lives into the 
dear days of childhood. That is the way 


4* THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

they refresh their spirits, that is the way 
they keep young.’ * 

“Boy,” said she, “ you are a K.S. ! You 
are wonderful! Let’s go back, back, back!” 

And by and by, in their wanderings, they 
came upon a high bank, and on the bank 
was set a stone tower with steps leading up to 
it, and they climbed the steps, and before 
them was spread a sheet of water, which they 
greeted with a little cry of pleasure. Into the 
tower there was let a door of iron grating, 
like a dungeon door, which stood open now. 

So they entered, and climbed up damp 
winding stairs of stone, till suddenly on the 
landing there opened before them in the stone 
a little casement, and in this casement was 
framed a picture out of a dream — blue, quiet 
water stretching North, without a boat on its 
rippled surface, lonely water that might have 
been in the wilderness. Far away, where the 
water ceased, were green trees against the 
hazy distance and then the great blue sky. 
To left and right the vivid, grassy banks and 
the blossoms of the Park just peeped into the 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 43 

picture, to give it softness and grace. But 
never a sign was there of the teeming town. 
The damp walls of the tower, closing in 
around the casement frame, shut out the 
world. And they stood at gaze, those two, 
and sighed with the sudden pleasure of it, and 
Philip murmured, “ Keats ! ” 

She quoted, slowly: 

“ Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” 

“ And yet,” he reflected, “ it’s really not 
that at all. Here is no foam, no perilous sea, 
nothing forlorn. It’s not Keats at all, yet it 
strangely affects one; it brings a quiver and 
stir into my imagination — old memories 
wake, just as if this window in Central Park 
were a magic casement, or were the falling 
cadence of the most haunting stanza in an ode 
by Keats.” 

“ Oh, Boy, Boy ! ” cried Marie, “ a win- 
dow in Central Park! How can you say it? 
Don’t you know that this is a magic case- 
ment ? That’s why your imagination stirs and 


44 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

wakes. Every window that lets the eye out 
of a dark place and frames suddenly a picture 
of green things or water, is a magic casement, 
has something of the quality of poetry. But 
this one is a magic casement indeed, for I can 
see through it into the dim land behind To- 
day, the dear, dim land of long ago ! ” 

Philip drew close to her on the narrow 
landing and she turned her face up to his. 

“ How well you understand things, don’t 
you?” he smiled. She colored, smiling at 
him in her grave, pleased way, but saying 
nothing. Then they faced once more the 
casement which held its still, sweet picture, 
and for a time he frowned in silence, as if the 
memories were gathering behind his brow. 
Finally he spoke: 

“The call of water stretching out! The 
still, hot sun! That long hill beyond the 
schoolhouse that used to look as if the sea 
lay just on the other side ! Later, in college, I 
read somewhere in Ruskin — ‘ Modern Paint- 
ers,’ I think — that a level hill against the sky 
used to give him the same sense of the sea. 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 4 5 

That’s why I like Ruskin. How they come 
back to me, those dead memories!” 

“ Tell me about them,” said a voice at his 
side. 

He began slowly, hesitatingly, as if the 
pictures were forming with difficulty, and he 
whimsically cast the story into the third per- 
son. But as he talked, his words came more 
freely, till at the end they were running with 
a kind of eloquence, and the girl listened very 
quietly, looking up into his face — though he 
did not know it — with covert admiration. 
And the story he told was called : 

Gbe ©tber SI be of tbe IbW. 

The boy lay under a cluster of choke- 
cherry trees at the edge of the mowing, and 
watched a farmer slouch across the stubble, 
surrounded to the knees by a swarm of 
startled grasshoppers. Beyond the distant 
river-meadow he could see a thin film of heat 
rising from the railroad bed, and now and 
then he caught the glint of steel, as if the 
rails were alive and stirring. Still farther 


4 6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

away was a long, level hill, and then — the 
sky, the blue, deep, mysterious sky. 

His eyes, chameleon like, deepened too as 
he gazed, and grew big with dreams. He did 
not hear the hot click, click of the mowing 
machine in the next field, the shouts of the 
driver, the dry shrill of insects in the grass. 
He did not even hear a step beside him and 
the rustle of skirts. 

“ Why, Philip,” said a voice that brought 
him to his feet and the blood to his face, “ I 
nearly stepped on you! Is this the way you 
help with the mowing? I was coming to 
watch you work.” 

The boy shifted uneasily. “ Dad didn’t 
need me,” he said. “ We ain’t goin’ to begin 
on the meadow hay until to-morrow. Will 
you — will you set down?” 

He motioned awkwardly to the patch of 
shadow under the choke-cherries. 

The girl — she was perhaps ten years his 
senior — smiled ever so little, spread out her 
dainty skirt, and sank with a wonderful grace 
on the grass. He watched her with uncon- 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 47 

cealed admiration. “ A man has to shut him- 
self up like a jack-knife to set down,” he said. 
“You just come down like — like a maple 
leaf!” 

“ It’s the skirt,” she smiled. “ You can’t 
see.” 

The boy grew painfully red, and took his 
place beside her in a silence that for a time 
she made no effort to break. Then she said, 
“ I’m going home Monday, Phil, did you 
know it? ” 

The boy’s mouth quivered, but he did not 
answer. She continued, u Your funny schools 
up here begin in August, don’t they? You’ll 
be going back to your books on the same 
day. I suppose you’re sorry for that.” 

“ Might as well go to school as anythin’ 
else,” he replied. 

She did not ask him why. Instead she 
pointed toward the distant hill. “ See, 
Philip,” she said, “ while you’re in school 
sometimes this winter you can look out of the 
window and think that I’m on the other side 
of that hill. Will you?” 


48 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

He gazed at her with astonished eyes. “ I 
guess I will,” he said. 

“ We’ve had lots of fun this summer, 
haven’t we?” she went on, gayly. “And 
you’ve been a dear boy to me, Phil, and 
shown me all the lovely things in the country, 
and taught me that real rabbits are brown in- 
stead of white — wasn’t I stupid not to know 
that? — and I shall never forget you. Per- 
haps I’ll come back next summer, and we can 
go fishing all day up river. We never got 
that party this summer, did we? ” 

“ How far on the other side of the hill will 
you be? ” he asked. 

She laughed. “ Maybe a hundred miles,” 
she said. “ I’ll be in a big city by the ocean, 
where the ships come in. Did you ever see the 
ocean? ” 

“ Once,” he answered. “ It frightened 
me!” 

“ Frightened you? Why? ” 

The boy thought a moment. “ I don’t 
know,” he said. “ It was a year ago. Uncle 
Amos took me to Boston, and we went to 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 49 

Nantasket, and I went down near it, and it 
seemed to be calling me away, away far off, 
to something I didn’t know nothing about. 
I — I hear it calling yet when I look at that 
hill” 

“You funny boy,” said she. “What do 
you mean? ” 

“ I can’t explain,” he answered. “ Only 
you don’t see nothing beyond that hill, and 
it looks as if the ocean was just over there. 
The sky goes down behind it just like it does 
into the ocean. When I look at it a long time 
it makes me afraid the way the sea did.” 

He pulled up a weed and tossed it into the 
pasture. “ I feel the same way looking at you 
sometimes,” he added. 

The girl shot a quick glance at him. 
“Philip,” she said soberly, “ you mustn’t be a 
silly boy.” 

“ I can’t help it,” he answered doggedly, 
“ — the way I feel, can I ? ” 

She had no rejoinder for this, looking away 
almost in embarrassment. The boy was aware 
of a subtle change. He moved a little closer 


50 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

to her, and laid his fingers on her skirt, strok- 
ing it ever so little. Gently the girl put out 
her hand to remove his fingers, with a quiet, 
“ Don’t, Philip ” — and a brown, strong hand 
closed over hers and held it fast. He lifted it 
to his face, and rubbed his cheek against it, 
looking at her with big, eager eyes. 

“Pm not afraid any more, Pm happy 1 ” 
he said suddenly, creeping against her side. 
At the touch of her he shivered, and as sud- 
denly the tears came, and he buried his face 
on her breast. He did not know what was the 
matter. The sobs just came, as if he were 
choking with a great disturbance within, that 
somehow the touch of her caused. His face 
felt her bosom heave and he was almost sick 
with the fragrance of her, the new, strange 
fragrance. Then he felt her bosom grow 
calmer. She lifted his face and kissed him 
on the lips. 

“ Philip,” she said, u I shall never come 
back from the other side of the hill, because — 
because you will never be afraid of me any 
more 1 ” 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 51 

Then she left him. 

He was eating bread and milk at mid-day, 
Monday, when she drove by on her way to 
the station. The boy ran out to say good- 
bye, and she put a faded brown book in his 
hands. 

“ I found it up at the house,” she said. 
“ They said I could have it for you. Some 
day, if you study hard, you will know what 
the title means. But please think when you 
read it, Phil, of the Lady on the Other Side 
of the Hill. Good-bye ! ” 

“Good-bye,” said the boy dully, with an 
awkward shake of the hand. He did not 
finish his bread and milk, but trudged back 
toward the schoolhouse with his faded brown 
book in his hand. “ Thalatta, a book for the 
Sea Side,” he read on the title page, and op- 
posite, in her own hand, his name and hers. 
Some other name, in faded ink, had been 
erased. 

He hid the book under his blouse as he drew 
near the school, that sat unshaded by the 
dusty road, over the brown river and the 


52 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

railroad crossing, with its warning signs like 
gallows posts. But once safe behind his desk, 
he slyly brought his treasure forth again, and 
dipped furtively into its pages. It was his 
first poetry, and time began to slip by. He 
read now with a puzzled frown, now with 
quickened heart-beat for a ballad. And at 
last he read something that he has never for- 
gotten, that long afterwards he found in the 
original German, with a pang of recognition : 

The sea hath its pearls, 

The heaven hath its stars; 

But my heart, my heart, 

My heart hath its love. 

Great are the sea and the heaven, 

Yet greater is my heart, 

And fairer than pearls and stars 
Flashes and beams my love. 

Thou little, youthful maiden, 

Come unto my great heart! 

My heart and the sea and the heaven 
Are melting away with love. 

He heard his name called and hastily hid 
the book. The boy behind tried to prompt 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 53 

him, but he was in a daze, and failed igno- 
miniously. Yet he curiously did not care. He 
sat down again and looked out of the open 
window. There lay his hill — his hill and hers. 
Formed of a great even billow of close- 
cropped pasture that gathered all across the 
plain and swelled up against the blue, and 
bearing along its summit a crest of gray stone 
wall, it stood out sharp against the sky line 
and hid every trace of what might lie on the 
farther side. There was indeed something im- 
pressive in the way the blue arch curved down 
behind the ridge, something suggestive, some- 
thing that filled you with wonder at all that 
lay beyond, even as the sea itself. Scattered 
clouds of pearly gray were banking now be- 
yond the summit, faintly glowing with pink 
on their hazy edges, as they do out over the 
waters. Again the boy’s eyes were big with 
dreams, but he was not frightened any more. 
The sea was over there, he knew it. If he 
should mount that pasture wall the blue ocean 
would stretch before him, calling by its music 
and its mystery, by its spirit of dreams, by 


54 the run-away place 

its sense of the infinite — calling to larger life 
and sweet, half-guessed emotions. He lis- 
tened for the sound of the distant surf. 

So he sat there by his desk, very still, gaz- 
ing over the wall crested ridge deep to where 
the sky dropped down, and dreamed away the 
long, hot afternoon, while the droning buzz 
of the school room sang unheeded in his ears 
and fractions and spelling were the things 
unreal. 

When he had done with the story there was 
silence. Philip looked out through the case- 
ment, with eyes that saw beyond the present, 
eyes that were wistful as those of a little boy. 
The girl looked covertly at him, and if he 
had faced upon her quickly he would have 
surprised something very like tears behind 
her long lashes. Finally she spoke: 

“ Did you — did the boy never see his lady 
on the other side of the hill again?” she 
asked. 

Philip shook his head. “ Of course not, 
that would spoil everything.” 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 55 

And if he had again faced upon her 
quickly, he would have discovered the hint of 
a passing flash of pleasure in the eyes which 
watched his face. But he did not turn. The 
mood of memory was still too strong upon 
him. And she said, “ So you were a little 
country bred boy? ” 

“ I grew up out of the soil, like a beet or a 
cabbage,” he laughed. “ And the country 
calls me still, calls me sometimes in the spring 
till I almost die of longing.” 

“ Why don’t you go back there? ” 

“ There’s a thing called ambition; but, tut, 
tut! what are we talking about? That’s 
grown-up language, only fit for stupid people 
and stupid places — not here and now.” 

He turned upon her almost sharply, and 
this time he did surprise a wistfulness in her 
face. His own mood faded, and he put out 
his hand impulsively on hers, which rested on 
the casement ledge. 

“ You see, I’m a great selfish lout of a coun- 
try boy running on about myself,” he cried. 
“ Now out with it, little Marie! ” 


56 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

She withdrew her hand gently. “ I was not 
raised a beet or a cabbage,” she smiled. “ I 
grew up in a window box, I guess! For I 
was born and reared in this desert of brick 
and asphalt. And there were always people 
all about me, as well as houses and streets. 
The people were worse than the houses. Al- 
ways the people — I could never get away 
from them! Yet I wanted to, even then. But 
sometimes we went into the country, and I 
lived a bit in the lands I read about. I was a 
terribly greedy reader, little boy! But even 
in the country the people followed me. Some- 
times it seems as if my life had been a long 
chase to get away from just folks! Do you 
know what I mean? n 

He nodded, smiling, though he really but 
dimly understood, and she went on: 

“ But once — one glorious summer — I got 
away, quite away; and this magic casement 
has brought it back to me, the memory of 
that escape, for I found a magic casement 
then, too, that looked out over blue water to 
Camelot.” 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 57 

“ As far as that? ” said he. 

“ As far as that ! ” she answered. “ I’ll 
try to tell you about it.” 

And the story was called : 

Z be OLtttle XaDg of Sbalott. 

All day I had tried to escape Jessica and 
Jean, to read my book, my dear book, of 
knights and ladies, tourneys and quests, which 
was none the less thrilling and beautiful when 
I could not quite understand it. All day they 
had sought me out in each new hiding place 
and with the stupidity and dulness of thirteen 
had teased me to come away from that stuffy 
old book, and have some fun. Not that they 
really wanted me, but the summer day was 
long and they never could imagine new plays 
for themselves. 

From the cherry tree to the hay loft, from 
the lower garden to the curtained window 
seat in the library, they had followed, their 
teasing voices scattering the silence around 
the white hermit’s cell and mixing with the 
clash of shields. And now they were coming 


58 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

again. I could hear them wondering “ where 
I was this time,” and oh, the meanness of it ! 
If they only got hold of that book they would 
hide it where I couldn’t find it for one while ! 
“ She’s stuck up,” I heard Jessica say, “ be- 
cause she likes to read more than we do.” 
Stuck up ! Because I would rather play with 
fairies and princes and great ladies than at 
their foolish games! Oh, the stupids! 

But I could stand it no longer. Like a 
shadow I crept from the library and up the 
back stairs. Up, up, I went in a breathless 
hurry, thinking to sit on the topmost step till 
the hunters should grow weary, and turn their 
attention elsewhere. Past the top floor land- 
ing I sped blindly in my haste, then turned a 
jog in the wall, and brought my nose too sud- 
denly against a little door. I suppose it had 
always been there, but we children rarely went 
above stairs in the few hours we spent indoors. 
I stood and looked at it, and listened — but 
there was no sound except a big fly which 
droned sleepily at being disturbed. 

At last the voices were still. Then I saw a 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 59 

little rusty key hanging on a nail in the wall, 
and I reached out and took it in my hand. 
My heart gave a thump as I thought of Blue 
Beard and Ali Baba and a dozen fairy tales 
all in a jumble, and something said in my ear, 
“You are going to have an adventure!” 
And I closed my eyes and said right out, 
“ Oh, please, let it be a lonely one ! ” Then 
I put the key in the lock, turned hard on it, 
for it was rusty, and opened the little door — 
and there was the adventure. 

It began with a little flight of twisty stairs. 
I shut the door behind me and crept up softly, 
there was such a hush all about, but when I 
got to the top, I said, “O!” so loud I made 
myself jump, and then I stood still and 
looked. 

What I saw was a big, square room with a 
slanting top, that felt as if it had been asleep 
a very long time, for the dust was thick and 
there wasn’t anything in it that wasn’t a 
great many years old. Of course I knew I 
was in the garret, but I wouldn’t have be- 
lieved a garret could be so lovely as this. I 


6o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


wondered why Aunt Adela had never told us 
about it, and why there weren’t a lot of trunks 
and broken chairs and other things around. 
But there weren’t. The only trunks I could 
see were three small ones trimmed with big 
nails, and on the tops of them the nails 
spelled “ P. W.” Then I knew they must 
have belonged to grandmother’s oldest little 
girl, who would have been my Aunt Priscilla 
if she had lived till I came. I remembered 
that she was only sixteen when she died, and 
how she had been the flower of the family, 
they said; and I wanted to open the little 
trunks very badly, but I thought that would 
be mean. 

I was almost afraid to walk around, it was 
so still. But then I wanted to explore the cor- 
ners, and look out the little window with the 
queer panes, which were so covered with dust 
that the sun seemed to be shining through a 
mist. At last I crossed over to it on tip-toe, 
and pulled and pulled. I was almost ready 
to give up, when it came open with a jerk 
and scratched my finger. But what did that 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 6 i 

matter, for out of the window I saw almost 
the whole world ! 

There was the lawn and the garden, with 
the wall of trees at the foot, and then the pas- 
ture and the orchard, and then more pastures 
that spread out like the green squares of my 
patchwork. Then there was a river, with 
a white sail moving on it, and beyond again 
a little city with faint towers, and farthest of 
all some hills that were very blue, with the 
clouds dropping over the edge like the boats 
that sail out of your sight at the seashore. 

I could have stood there all day thinking 
of the wonderful tales that kept running in 
my head, but it was afternoon and I must 
explore my secret while the sun was still light- 
ing it. I crept softly around, feeling all the 
time as though I were discovering treasures, 
for there was an old, high-backed sofa where 
I could sit and read, two little chairs, a great 
bureau with a drawer full of books, and, oh, 
it was too good to be true ! — a real spinning- 
wheel. 

I had been trying to make up my mind who 


62 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


I was, but the minute I saw the wheel and 
remembered my scratched linger, I knew that 
I was the Sleeping Beauty. So I pulled a low 
chair in front of the wheel, where I could 
look through the window, and began to turn 
it, slowly at first, then faster, till it began to 
sing a little song. I looked at the trees at 
the foot of the garden and wondered how 
high they would be when I had slept a hun- 
dred years; I looked at the twisted stairway 
and wondered when the wicked fairy would 
come. And there was the real scratch 
on my finger. The sun came in through the 
little window, the bees hummed outside, the 
wheel hummed in the room — and the next 
thing I knew, my head bumped the back of 
the chair, and I opened my eyes and said, 
“ How did you find me? ” because I had been 
dreaming about the prince. 

But there was no answer. The shadows 
were all about the room. The sun had gone 
down. Far away I heard a bell ringing. So 
I knew that I wasn’t a princess any more that 
day. I took a last look out of the window 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 63 

before I closed it. Then I crept down the 
twisty stairs and locked the little door, and 
never remembered till I was sitting at the tea- 
table that I had left my book behind me and 
had forgotten to read a word. 

I was so busy thinking about my castle, and 
wondering who I would be the next day, that 
I didn’t hear very much of what they 
were talking about, till I caught the name 
“ Priscilla.” Then I stopped dreaming 
pretty quick, and listened as hard as I could. 
Aunt Adela was talking to Uncle Stuart. 
They were looking at me, and she was saying, 
“ I never noticed it before, but that child cer- 
tainly has a look of Priscilla’s younger pic- 
tures.” 

Uncle squinted up his eyes as if he were 
looking a long way off, and said, “ I don’t 
know but you’re right, Adela. At any rate, 
she’s more like her in temperament than either 
of ours.” 

I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by tem- 
perament, but all of a sudden it came to me 
that perhaps she had liked to go up in the 


6 4 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

old garret to play by herself, and that was 
the reason her things were up there, and it 
had been always kept as I had found it — and 
I loved it more than ever. I went over to 
Uncle Stuart. “ Did she like to read and 
imagine things ? ” I asked him. 

“ Who? Priscilla? ” he questioned. 

“ Yes,” said I, “ the one you were just 
talking about.” 

“ I believe she did,” he said slowly. 
“ Mother always said she was a great dream- 
er. She might have been a poet. It’s a 
pity she didn’t live to grow up,” he finished 
with a sigh. 

But I hardly heard him. A thought had 
come into my head, a thought of a new play, 
and I could scarcely wait to begin it. I ran to 
the library, took down an album of old photo- 
graphs, and hunted till I came to a page filled 
with pictures of the little girl Priscilla. Some 
were standing, some sitting, some were just of 
her head. But the one I liked best of all was 
where she was looking out of a window. 

I took the book over to Aunt Adela. 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 65 

“May I have this for a little while?” I 
asked. “ I’ll be very careful of it.” 

“Why, you funny child,” said my aunt, 
“what do you want it for?” 

“Just to look at,” I said. “I like to 
think about her because she imagined things, 
too.” 

“ Very well,” said Aunt Adela, “ don’t 
lose it.” She slipped the picture out of the 
page and handed it to me. 

After I was in bed and the light was out I 
took the picture from under my pillow and 
whispered to it. 

“ To-morrow,” I said, “ you’re going to 
play with me in the garret — just us alone — 
and you’re going to look out of the real little 
window again, and see the city with the 
towers, which is where the knights live, and 
I’ll read to you out of my book, and maybe 
some poetry, too, though sometimes the words 
are hard for nine and a half.” 

Priscilla didn’t answer, but I had hardly 
expected she would, so I tucked her back 
under my pillow and went to sleep to dream 


66 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


that I was a captive maiden in a tower 
guarded by two witches who looked like Jes- 
sica and Jean, and that Sir Launcelot came 
to rescue me and put me in a photograph 
album, and so I got out unseen. 

All morning I went round with Priscilla 
in my pocket. When the twins weren’t look- 
ing I would take her out and whisper to her, 
and tell her not to be impatient, though I 
guess she wasn’t the only one who needed to 
be told that. After lunch Aunt Adela said 
she was going for a drive and we could go if 
we wanted to. I waited to see what the 
twins were going to do. Yes, they wanted to 
go. Then Priscilla and I would stay home. 
Aunt Adela was waiting for me to choose. 

“ Thank you, Aunt,” I said, “ if you don’t 
mind I think we would rather not go this 
afternoon.” 

Aunt Adela looked surprised. “ We f” 
she said, “ but the twins are going.” 

Then I knew that I had spoken about 
Priscilla, too, and I grew very red and un- 
comfortable. I wasn’t really happy again 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 67 

until I saw the back of the carriage go out 
the gate. Then I took Priscilla in my hand 
and flew up the back stairs. 

I opened the little door, and there was my 
castle with the sun shining through the misty 
window, and my knight-book on the couch. 
First I must put Priscilla where she could look 
out of a real window, then I would read to her 
and we would imagine. I fastened the pic- 
ture against the wall so that she could look 
at the river and the towers, then I said, 
“ Priscilla, I s’pose you know that’s Camelot 
over there? ” 

The picture nodded its head ever so little. 

“Well,” I said, “we are going to play a 
very sad story to-day, because I feel just like 
imagining about sad things, and the lady in 
the story was a very sad person indeed. You 
see, she used to stand by the casement, which 
is just what we are doing, only she couldn’t 
stop to look out, though she wanted to ever 
so badly — because there were so many in- 
teresting and wonderful people, like knights, 
that kept riding by. But all the time she 


68 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


had to keep weaving their pictures and she 
could only look at them in a mirror, which 
‘ hung before her all the year,’ the book says. 
I should think she’d have got pretty tired. 

“ Well, one day while she was weaving and 
weaving, Sir Launcelot came riding along. 
He was the most beautiful knight in the 
world, and his armor was so bright it looked 
like a flame, and he was singing as he rode by 
the river. The lady saw him in her mirror, 
and she couldn’t help it, but went to the win- 
dow and looked out just like we’re doing. 
Then the mirror cracked from side to side, 
so she knew she must die. I wish I knew 
why. She went out of her tower and down 
to the river and there she found a boat, so 
she lay down in it, and it floated on the 
stream to Camelot. When it got there the 
lady was dead and all the people and the 
knights came down to the water to see her, 
and they crossed themselves for fear, all ex- 
cept Launcelot, who was the bravest knight 
in the world, and the kindest. He just 
looked at her, and saw how beautiful she 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 69 

was; then he said, ‘ God in His mercy lend 
her grace.’ I guess He did if Sir Launcelot 
asked him.” 

I felt so sad by this time with imagining 
about the lovely dead lady, that before I 
knew it two tears splashed on the window 
sill, and then two more, but I didn’t care if 
Priscilla did see, because I felt so nice inside. 
I always liked to feel sad that way, when the 
thoughts were just imagining ones — and then 
the sun made the tears look like diamonds on 
the dusty sill. 

So I told Priscilla I was the kind girl in 
“ Diamonds and Toads,” but she was looking 
far over the towers, and I knew she was 
wishing that a knight would come riding by, 
so I didn’t interrupt her, because that is a 
lovely play. So I played it too, until it be- 
gan to get dark. Then I kissed Priscilla 
good-night and closed the window, for the 
nights were rather cool. 

“ To-morrow,” I said, “ we’ll play Elaine. 
Then some other day we’ll play 4 Sister Ann, 
Sister Ann, do you see anything coming?’ 


70 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

which will be very exciting, because there’s 
nearly always a cloud of dust somewhere.” 

And I got so interested thinking of the 
plays we would have that I forgot I was in a 
secret and talked out loud. But when I 
remembered, and put my hand over my 
mouth, there wasn’t any sound, so I knew the 
secret was safe. 

It was quite the best one I ever had. 
Priscilla and I played it all summer, and you 
couldn’t think how many stories you can be 
when you have a castle of your own with a 
window where you can see a river and a city 
with towers. Long before we had finished 
imagining, and I still had a great deal of the 
knight-book to read, it was time to go back 
to the city. 

The afternoon before we were to leave, I 
went up the twisty stairs for a last visit. 
Priscilla was still looking out of the window 
— she never seemed to get tired of it. But I 
took her down gently. 

“ You must come too,” I told her, “ I 
promised Aunt Adela you would, and anyway 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 71 

the castle would be cold in winter. But next 
summer we will both come back,” I added, 
for I could see a shadow fall on her face. 

There was a lump in my throat that was 
not quite a pleasant one, but it had to be 
done, so we went around and said good-bye 
to everything, and last of all to the three little 
trunks where the nails spelled “ P. W.” on 
the covers. Priscilla felt worst about leav- 
ing those, but my worst feeling was when I 
closed the window for the last time. The 
sun looked very misty, and I don’t think it 
was all the dust on the window panes. 

After tea I took Priscilla to Aunt Adela. 
“ Thank you for lending her to me,” I said. 
“ She’s been very comforting.” 

“ What on earth ” said Aunt Adela. 

“ Well, you see,” I said, trying to explain, 
“ we’re interested in the same things, and 
it’s very pleasant to have someone interested 
in the same things you are.” 

But Aunt Adela only stared; then she said, 
“ Child, dreaming has gone to your head. 
It’s lucky school begins Monday.” 


72 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

So I knew she was too grown up to under- 
stand. Poor Aunt Adela ! But Priscilla and 
I understood. 

The next day we left for the city. Just 
before we reached the turnpike, there was a 
bend in the road where you saw the house for 
the last time. I was in the back seat of the 
carriage so that I could look at it till the last 
minute. We turned into the bend, and just 
then the sun, which had been under a cloud, 
flashed out all of a sudden, and there was 
my little window 7 ! All the panes were gold 
and blue like jewels. For a minute they 
shone and sparkled and twinkled at me. 
Then the road dipped down and the wall of 
trees shut my castle from my sight. 

The girl’s voice died away, and the two 
stood looking in silence out of the little win- 
dow across the reservoir and the Park, their 
shoulders close together. Finally the boy 
spoke. 

“ Whether it’s towered Camelot or the blue 
plain of the sea, always it is far away, c over 


THE MAGIC CASEMENT 73 

the hills and far away ! ’ It seems but a step 
when we are children, but we never get to it.” 

“ But we have got to it,” she urged, “ we 
have run back to it just now, in memory.” 

“ No, we have run back into sight of it 
again, that is all.” 

“ Oh, Boy,” said she, “ now you are talk- 
ing sad, grown up talk. You mustn’t.” 

“ But I must,” he answered. “ It is good 
to dream as a child again, to feel the clouds 
of glory trail. But it is unspeakably sad, too, 
for what has become of those dreams ? Why 
have we not found them ? How can we find 
them now? What others can we find to 
answer in their places?” 

“ Have you found no other lady beyond 
the hill? ” she queried. 

“ Have you seen Sir Launcelot ride by? ” 
he answered. 

Again there was silence. He looked at 
the girl so close beside him, at her sober, 
dreaming, wistful face. To find another 
lady beyond the hill — to be her Sir Launce- 
lot! 


74 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ I wonder! ” he half whispered. 

The girl moved hastily away from the case- 
ment. “ I must be going now,” she said. 
But she cast a farewell look behind. “ Dear, 
dear casement ! ” were her parting words. 


CHAPTER III 


CHILD PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 

pHILIP was quite sure that he had belated 
spring fever. Spring fever in him did 
not manifest itself alone by a great longing to 
escape from New York: for that longing he 
knew most of the time. Nor did it manifest 
itself in a mighty desire to go swimming: for 
that he had most of the time also. He once 
defined winter as a long wait in a tank for 
Coney Island to open. In him spring fever 
manifested itself in an irresistible impulse to 
write causeries. Was it not Sainte-Beuve 
who defined a causerie as an open letter to all 
whom it may concern? Philip, however, had 
a better definition. According to him, a 
causerie is “ the sort of stuff no editor will 
print.” Therefore, an irresistible impulse to 
write causeries is, in a struggling young 
author of to-day, nothing more nor less than 


7 6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

an outbreak of idealism. (Or, do you say, 
foolishness? It is much the same!) But, 
finding himself suddenly seized with the im- 
pulse, Philip simply said, “ Spring fever.” 

He made no effort to resist the impulse. 
The charm of writing a causerie is much like 
the charm of reading one; it resides in the 
unpremeditation, the impulsiveness, the com- 
pulsion to chat. To chat! How little time 
or place is there for chat in our modern maga- 
zines, where there is so much chatter! Chat 
is the intimate revelation, in kindly inter- 
course, of one man’s soul and opinions. One 
only chats when life is going slowly by, and 
never with a muck rake in one’s hand. One 
chats, thought Philip, when one has spring 
fever. 

But, after all, there is an art behind the 
printed chat — or should be. An author’s 
causeries, like a woman’s impulses, are always 
the result of careful consideration. Philip 
knew this, who had so often read aloud, to 
himself, the Essays of Elia, almost ready to 
cry with mingled delight, envy and despair at 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 77 

their subtly cadenced periods. So, as he 
loafed about the city that day after Child 
Marie and he had wandered back into child- 
hood by the wistful way of memory, with 
what he called spring fever urging him to 
go home and bubble over upon paper deli- 
ciously melancholy reflections that nobody 
would print, he kept trying to steer these re- 
flections toward a definite point. The only 
trouble was, he kept forgetting the point. 

Finally, he ate a solitary dinner at his 
“ club ” — his “ club ” being a certain ancient 
hotel down where the Avenue begins, where 
the coffee is French and fragrant, and the 
magazines, in black leather bindings, French 
and spicy. Then he went home to his rooms, 
high above the Square where the cross gleams 
by night, and by day sunny, red-brick, beauti- 
ful houses look down in aristocratic benignity 
on the little children of the poor, and the 
window panes are growing purple. 

First he locked his door. Then he took off 
his coat and rolled up his sleeves. Then he 
put a half completed manuscript of a very 


78 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

marketable story with a very happy ending, 
deep into a drawer. Then he filled six 
pipes, lit one of them, and laid the rest, with 
a box of matches, in a row on his desk. Next 
he placed a pile of clean copy paper in front 
of him, and sat down to write. 

As a preliminary he made a figure “ i ” in 
the corner of the top sheet. Then he won- 
dered why Marie looked so tired and wistful, 
and drew a pen sketch of an elephant, one of 
the few animals he could delineate success- 
fully, as he considered the problem. Then 
he got up and crossed to the piano, playing a 
few bars of the andante of Mozart’s second 
sonata. Philip was sadly deficient in tech- 
nique, but he had imagination. The music, 
in that odd way music has, contrived to put 
him into the necessary mood. He went back 
to his desk, picked up his pen, and wrote 
steadily. Evidently the words came freely. 
There was no interruption to the scratch, 
scratch of his pen, save when he paused to 
light a fresh pipe. Finally, as the early milk 
wagons were rattling through the Square, he 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 79 

tipped back in his chair and began without 
rising to undress. The first sheet of his 
manuscript bore the heading, 

Ibow to be Ibappg tbousb lit IRevv 
Lest, in the flattering event of some read- 
er’s pushing his way middistance into this dis- 
course, the cry should be raised as if in tri- 
umph of discovery, “ That is, after all, the 
trouble with him ! ” I will state at the outset 
that I am a bachelor, and by preference — 
whose preference I need not be expected to 
disclose. Let a man affirm that he is lonely, 
discontented, at odds of the spirit with his 
environment, and the first remark his friends 
address to him in consolation — especially if 
they be themselves single — is, “ You ought to 
get married.” Flying in the face of daily ex- 
ample and historical record, they affirm, as 
it were, that marriage is a sure dispeller of 
discontent, a panacea for loneliness and the 
thousand miserable moods of sadness the iso- 
lated human spirit knows. 

Now, nothing is plainer, of course, than 


8o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


the fact that discontent, even if it vanish like 
the morning mists at the daybreak of matri- 
mony, too often settles down again in a good, 
steady drizzle before noon ; that no loneliness 
in this lonely world can equal the void which 
separates some husbands from some wives; 
and that a spiritual moodiness existing before 
the nuptial day is not to be driven out of a 
man’s system by the shock of wedding bells. 
Schopenhauer married would have been the 
same philosopher as Schopenhauer single, or 
more so. Not willing to concede, then, that 
my moods result inevitably, or even probably, 
from the fact that I live in a state of “ single 
cussedness,” I once more affirm boldly and 
deny that the affirmation should count against 
me, that I am a bachelor! 

I am perfectly ready to admit you that 
matrimony might elevate me, or any other 
man, into a sphere of such serene harmony 
and peace that the vexations of mortal en- 
vironment would be as naught, that New 
York itself, in fact, would sink so far below 
the window of our flat as to tell to our en- 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 81 

raptured eyes (should we care to raise the 
shade) but as a dirty smudge on the green 
shoulder of the world. Though I have had 
little experience in matrimony, it may be ad- 
mitted without dispute that I have had quite 
my share of experience in those delectable 
skirmishes which precede it, and if I have 
never been mortally — I mean matrimonially 
— wounded, I have more than once been 
sorely hit. Perhaps, for all you know, Gentle 
Reader, I have even looked into the Promised 
Land, perhaps I buried my hopes one bitter 
midnight in the Vale of Moab, where weep- 
ing cupids turned the sod and no man saw, 
perhaps I too know the green felicity and 
the never-to-be-forgotten sweet promise of 
fruitfulness which that land affords. But I 
only admit this felicity might be. And I do 
most earnestly protest against the illogical 
assumption that because it sometimes is, the 
converse proposition is true, namely, that un- 
happiness and discontent are the result of 
being single. Because a man drinks whiskey 
and becomes jovial, it does not follow that 


82 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

your sober and melancholy fellow is melan- 
choly because he is sober. 

Therefore, once and for all, let us have 
done with this conventional, ill-considered, 
rather tiresome advice (usually accompanied 
with a disgusting slap on the shoulder), this 
hollowly hearty, “ Get married, old chap ! ” 
and, confessing fairly that the question of 
matrimony is at best but a side issue, face 
the great problem, How to be happy though 
in New York. 

One of the jolliest of book plates is that 
designed for the author of the “ London 
Lyrics,” by Kate Greenaway. She was his 
later, as George Cruikshank had been his 
earlier illustrator; but nothing she did for the 
text was quite so delightful as the book plate, 
with “ Fear God, fear naught ” above, and 
“ Frederick Locker ” below, and between, 
those inimitable two young people sitting be- 
neath a Kate Greenaway tree laden with fruit 
and the Locker arms, while far away across 
sunny fields rises the distant panorama of 
London, crowned with St. Paul’s dome. 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 83 

It all seems quite natural, even to the 
solemn owl perched on a bit of fence be- 
neath the tree. No doubt just such kiddies 
do exist within sight of London Town, and 
no doubt they sit beneath just such a tree, 
tired of reading, but not at all drawn to 
pluck the tempting fruit, as round and red 
as their dear cheeks. No doubt they exist 
within London Town itself, and surely Mr. 
Barrie knows where to find them. But the 
other day I tried the fanciful experiment 
of copying them faithfully out, minute line 
for line, with pencil and water colors, kid- 
dies and apples and owl and funny tree, all 
save the distant panorama of London across 
the sunny fields. In place of that, I drew 
in the sky line of New York as it looked 
the morning I began to work. They had 
three new sky-scrapers up before I finished. 

The result was unutterably melancholy. 

The kiddies, who had seemed their jovial 
selves before I added this last touch, were 
suddenly converted into an infant Adam and 
Eve, who had eaten of the fruit of the Tree 


84 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

of Knowledge, which grew above them. The 
owl seemed very like our old friend Satan, in 
feathered guise, and the sunlight had faded 
from the intervening spaces. It was a curi- 
ous phenomenon, and I puzzled long over the 
picture to see if I could detect any flaw in the 
copying. No, the copy was faithful: and 
when I washed out the sky line of New York 
and substituted that of London, as in the 
original drawing, rising in a long, low pyra- 
mid to the central dome, the picture lost its 
grotesqueness, becoming once more sunny, 
charming, natural. The fruit was once more 
sweet. 

This chance experiment led me to pry 
more minutely into the moods and atmosphere 
of New York City, the Titan of the Western 
world, that squats clumsily on the too small 
space of Manhattan Island and watches the 
myriad ships come up the Bay. Surely, 
thought I, a town that cannot harbor two of 
Kate Greenaway’s darling brood, even in its 
suburbs, cannot give soil to a Kate Green- 
away tree, must have something the matter 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 85 

with it. Through this curious by-way was I 
led consciously up to the great problem, How 
to be happy though in New York. 

That the problem is a great one, a cloud of 
witnesses at once attest, none other than the 
theaters, music halls, vaudeville houses, glit- 
tering restaurants, and all the patrons of these 
places. Attempting to keep New York 
happy is, indeed, an industry that owns mil- 
lions of real estate, employs thousands of men 
and women, and makes the fortunes of a 
few. (I wonder if that makes them happy?) 
Even our cafes may be divided into two 
classes, the places to eat in and the places to 
spend money in. Those of the second class 
belong solely to this amusement industry, 
quite separate from the industry of keeping 
New York fed; to be sure, they call on the 
food (and drink) industry for material as- 
sistance and a thinly veiled excuse; but the 
glittering restaurant really exists to cater not 
to the desire for food, but to the love of ex- 
citement, of amusement; not to the hungry 
but to the bored. 


86 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Ah, is it not just this, just boredom, just 
loneliness, that drives to such cafes so many 
of the young and once pure in heart, there to 
find in the “ lobster palaces,” as we call them, 
if not happiness, at least company and luxury 
and freedom from the awful face of Want? 
Could virtue glitter so, be so gay, smell so 
savory, would evil have to lurk behind those 
penciled eyes? God’s arch foe is not Lucifer 
but Loneliness. 

Primarily, at any rate, the glittering res- 
taurant has as little to do with feeding people 
as the theater with educating them. A 
hungry man has as little place in one of these 
cafes as an intelligent man at a musical 
comedy. Broadway, then, upper Broadway, 
from the gusty Flatiron to the thirsty Circle, 
blazing with lights like no other place on 
earth, alive with cabs and motors and actors 
out of a job, and women with diamonds and 
dirty nails; lined with restaurants and thea- 
ters — shouts with its myriad voices the mighty 
desire to be amused, the mighty effort to satis- 
fy this desire. The roll of carriages, the 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 87 

popping of corks, the flash of a stocking, the 
crash of rag time, the outpouring of a tenor’s 
“ golden voice ” at $2,500 per hour, the as- 
similation of lobster, the plays of Shakespeare 
(sometimes) and Clyde Fitch, the old drama 
of the moth and the flame, when the moth is 
often young and a man, and the flame bril- 
liant with a peroxide radiance — all this is but 
a part, but the Rialto’s answer to the great 
problem, How to be happy though in New 
York. 

However, I am not going into a moral 
bluster, picking up my intellectual skirts with 
the mental daintiness of a Harvard English 
professor, at mention of these thousands who 
approach the problem through the Great 
White Way. The goodly proportion of 
them who are not compelled by circumstances 
to be found in New York of an evening, but 
who remain here of their own volition, de- 
serve no better fate ; it were time worse than 
wasted to flash ideals before their eyes. And 
on the remainder I can look with a certain 
comfortable pity, a pity such as one feels for 
suffering in a play. Are they not compelled, 


88 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


like me, to pass their lives in New York, 
poor things? Consequently they have no 
homes (a home is impossible south of Yonk- 
ers) , no neighbors, no ties of locality and com- 
munal spirit; they are not quite real; I am 
sure their souls are like their complexions. 
And they have nothing real to do. 

Nothing to do! That is the trouble with 
our stage to-day, with our great city where 
the destiny of our stage is shaped, with our 
civilization. When people have nothing to 
do, they will do anything — they will even go 
to a Cohan comedy ! They must kill time at 
any price. Thus bad art flourishes as the 
price, lax standards prevail, and a glaring 
mediocrity marks our stage, and our visible 
civilization. Art, indeed, varies directly in 
quality with the number of other interests in 
life, and civilization with the proportion of 
neighborliness. Because I, too, am cooped 
up without neighborly interests and a home, 
in this city of sky-scrapers, subways and ennui, 
and know the nothing-to-do unrest which gets 
into the blood like sunflower sap, facing a 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 89 

man squarely to a blazing amusement sign, I 
pity these patrons of the Rialto. But it is a 
comfortable pity, for the very simple reason 
that I am a philosopher in my way. What 
can I do about it? (A philosopher, you will 
observe, is a man who can explain anything 
but get excited about nothing). 

That isn’t the whole reason, either; no 
philosophical reason ever is. I know it isn’t, 
because my pity is stirred by another feature 
of life in this city which I am quite as power- 
less to remedy; but God knows this pity is not 
comfortable! Perhaps you, too, have been 
moved to the same emotion by the same cause; 
but I doubt it. The Rialto and its peculiar 
life and atmosphere are known to every one; 
some even call it New York. It is very far 
from that. Go with me to the Bowery any 
night at six o’clock, and stand on a corner 
near Spring Street for fifteen minutes, and I 
will prove to you that there is a city within 
the city, such as you never dreamed. The 
rush at Brooklyn Bridge, the stream of hu- 
manity uptown at night, is as nothing to this 


90 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

spectacle of mine. Yet no “ Seeing New 
York” coaches ever make it a point of their 
pilgrimage; no New Yorkers ever show it to 
their visitors as one of the sights of the town ; 
unnoticed as the sun-rising and the inevitable 
march of night, daily this spectacle is spread 
for eyes to see ; the most significant, the most 
tremendous, the most unutterably melancholy 
spectacle the teeming town affords. 

To the west lie the sweat-shops, lining 
Broadway in deep blocks a dozen stories high, 
flanking every side street between Grace 
Church and the old Canal. To the east, be- 
tween the Bowery and the river, lies the great 
tenement city, life and death clashing in its 
attics, love and horror buried in its cellars, 
the most thickly populated section of the 
globe, the abiding place of a hundred tribes 
and races. At six o’clock the factories dis- 
gorge the mass of toilers, men and women, 
girls and boys, little children, which they 
swallowed up in the morning and extracted 
vitality from all day. 

And this disgorged mass of humanity, this 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 91 

army of slaves to the passion for underwear, 
with one accord and a sound as of many 
waters troubled, turns eastward toward the 
tenement city. At every cross street the 
multitudes burst into the Bowery like a flood 
let loose. They cross the broad thorough- 
fare in black swarms, blocking travel, split in- 
to irregular sections by passing cars, crawling 
like great snakes under the straddling spans 
of the elevated road. And then the van- 
guard is swallowed up in the hiving tenement 
town beyond. But there seems no end to the 
streams. Out of the west they come, and 
cross, and vanish into that wofully tiny sec- 
tion of the free earth’s crust, and more fol- 
low, and more, and more. How does that 
teeming, sweating hive hold them all? Will 
they never stop pouring into it? Look up as 
far as an eye can see, down as far the other 
way, the Bowery is black with the swarming 
army, the great daily migration — homeward. 

Home! What chance for homes where 
they abide? What place for a family where 
there are so many children? What oppor- 


92 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

tunity of neighborliness where there are so 
many neighbors? What hope for art where 
there is so much ignorance, for civilization 
where there is so little soap ? Yet hear them ; 
they are chattering in half a hundred tongues, 
singing in quite as many keys, laughing, 
shouting. They, too, must try to be happy; 
theirs, too, is the great quest ! At night they 
will be on the streets, at their poor theaters, 
in their dance halls and cafes; you may see 
them searching, searching for something to 
do, for their birthright to be happy. But 
many of them you will not see, though they 
also are searching. It is better that you 
should not. Some of these invisible ones are 
girls, young girls. That lithe, trim figure of 
a maid who crossed the Bowery with head 
held high at six o’clock is of their number. It 
is better you should go home now, as I do, 
and shut yourself in from the pity, the hor- 
ror of it all. You, too, must be happy, even 
in New York; it is your birthright. 
****** 

Here, high above the Square, my Square, 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 93 

the door locked, books comfortably looking 
down at me from their tall cases, the Rialto 
and the Bowery alike slip out of memory, and 
I become interested in myself. 

To become interested in one’s self is not 
easy. Most people fancy it is; but that is 
because they have never tried it. To be in- 
terested in yourself, you must have two selves. 
Most people have only one. That is why 
they are called selfish. The self I am in- 
terested in reads many books, and I watch 
him like a critic and kindly librarian. 

Sometimes, to be sure, he wanders about 
town, made very happy by the stray wonder- 
bits of beauty that he finds in this city we are 
in the habit of calling ugly. To stand in 
Gramercy Park of an evening and, looking 
north, first at the cosy red-brick houses and 
the trees, slowly to lift his eyes above them 
to see the monstrous, pale bulk of the new 
tower booming up against the stars, is to 
him an indescribable delight. So, on a misty 
day, is the Flatiron Building towing Broad- 
way northward, like some great liner of the 


94 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

land; and upper Broadway by night when 
driving steam plumes go by the Times tower 
like clouds cutting oh a mountain summit; 
and sunset down a side street; and Japanese 
twilights when across the open spaces the 
great slab walls of the sky-scrapers are but 
a deeper shade of the sky, picked out with 
golden lights. A thousand vistas of beauty 
pierce their way out of the sordidness of our 
city, for the seeing eye. What right have we 
to call New York ugly? We never look at 
it! 

Never-the-less, the other chap called Me 
always comes home at last for final satisfac- 
tion in his books. Always some grain of 
ugly dust blows up the pleasant vista. Al- 
ways the sunset fades, the Japanese twilight 
deepens into gloom. But books remain, 
eternal comforters. 

I once went away from New York into the 
country, and sat at night on a New England 
hillside, alone with my God, my pipe and the 
whippoorwills. In the thicket below me, 
on the height above, far out through the dark 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 95 

valley, rose the long, clear, half sad, half 
cheerful whistle of the nightingales of the 
North. 

“ Why must silly men be forever writ- 
ing ‘ nature books ’ ? ” I said to myself. 
“ What do I care what a whippoorwill looks 
like, or when he builds his nest, or where? 
Why should anybody care ? It were quite as 
well if the whippoorwill had no body at all, 
so long as his whistle lived ! That is the im- 
portant thing, the only thing that matters, for 
it is the soul of the bird and his environment, 
the common sense and not very poignant 
melancholy of the New England summer 
night. And who needs a nature book to tell 
him what this whistle sounds like, still less to 
read its meaning?” 

Then I looked out over the dark, still 
world, that swung visibly eastward under the 
patient stars. My soul was taken up into im- 
mensity. “ D n all books ! ” I added, 

aloud. 

That, of course, is the healthy view — out- 
side of New York. But in New York books 


96 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

are, after all, essential for salvation, which Is 
why perhaps they are so little read here. If 
there be any to whom the Rialto is vain 
and the East Side intolerable; for whom the 
great nervous streets of this city are as im- 
prisoning canons, for all their vistas here and 
there into Beauty; with whom there ever 
walks the haunting ghost of fairer ways and 
days, of lost youth and a forgotten, sweet 
power of imaginative life, to them I speak, 
and to them only. If any others have fol- 
lowed me this far, I am very sorry, but I 
must ask them to turn back. I am going to 
shut the door of my castle — my library — and 
talk soberly with the chosen few. 

I shall not be long, my friends (for I may 
call you friends, though you are to me but 
shadows?). Truly sober talks are never 
long. A few words, the bold outline sketch 
of a mood, and all is accomplished. The 
mind of the auditor leaps forth to clothe and 
color the skeleton, and the two, speaker and 
listener, sit silent before the finished work. 

It is a House of Life we would create to 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 97 

be happy; in our imaginations, since we can- 
not buy such in the New York real estate 
market. (That we cannot buy any houses in 
the real estate market does not alter the 
case !) But each of us must be his own Ros- 
setti, for each desires something other than 
the rest in the adornment of the facade, 
the arch of the windows, the furnishing of the 
rooms, the height of the chamber. Don’t 
build with too much fiction. Truth is often 
a stranger to fiction. There is more solidity 
of foundation in the mastery of an intellectual 
idea; hence more pleasure in contemplating 
the completed edifice. Read a great work of 
science at least once every six months ; it will 
take you two months to do it. James’s 
“ Varieties of Religious Experience ” is good. 
So are Martineau’s sermons, and with them 
you build solid and carve sweet, solemn 
images over the door as well. Adorn your 
walls with the wonderful water color gems of 
the Elizabethan lyric poets, to sing to you as 
you pass from room to room; and in the 
spacious dining-room, where you go to grow, 


98 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

let Shelley or Isaiah or Shakespeare or Car- 
ducci paint you a fresco, as you choose. It 
were well, too, to have Heine’s sardonic smile 
on the landing, to keep fermenting deep in 
your nature a due sense of humor. 

And upstairs the world is yours, whatever 
sweet dreams you desire, and for company 
your own fancy, kept alive by the daily touch 
with genius; your own fancy peopling your 
rooms with faces wished for, with faces loved 
and lost, spreading without your windows 
golden stretches of that magic land beyond 
the sunset, which, as you grow older, you will 
learn, if your childhood was happy, is none 
other than the dear countryside where you 
grew up, and learned to love a maid, and 
speak the name of Home. 

* i|C * 

Thus I talk to them — these chosen, shadow 
friends — and they rise silently and depart. 
And my own words come back in a surge over 
my heart, echoing like the sea as it mounts the 
shore. That land beyond the sunset, which 
is none other than the dear countryside where 


PHILIP AS ESSAYIST 99 

you grew up — and learned to love a maid — 
and speak the name — of Home. It is late, 
too late, to read; I will go to bed. Ah! 
Why do I hesitate, draw back? The pillow 
lies white and inviting. The single pillow 
. . . and learned to love a maid — and 
speak the name of Home ! 

Yes, Dear Reader, you who cried out im- 
pulsively when I began, “ That is, after all, 
the trouble with him ! ” and were rebuked 
(perhaps) when I so completely and over- 
whelmingly refuted you, it is your turn now 
again ! 


CHAPTER IV 


A BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 

A DAY or two later Philip came upon 
Marie on the lower slopes of Mount 
Mozart, laying down the law to a nurse 
maid. She was so occupied with her mis- 
sionary task that she did not notice his ap- 
proach. 

“ Don’t you know any better than that? ” 
she was saying to the awed nurse maid. 
“You’re not fit to have charge of a baby! 
The idea of letting the poor little thing sleep 
with the blazing sun full on its eyes ! Don’t 
you know that might injure the child’s eyes 
permanently? Now remember, when you 
have it out doors in the future, either pull the 
shade of the carriage down to protect it, or 
face it away from the sun.” 

“ Yiss, Mum,” said the astonished nurse 
maid, beginning to wheel her charge away. 

IOO 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL ioi 


“ You suggest Nehemiah, the prophet,” 
said Philip, with a laugh. 

“ I fail to get the connection of ideas,” 
Marie answered. She was still possessed of 
her indignation, and in no mood for laughter. 
She seemed, indeed, rather far away from 
him, and he felt an unreasoned rage against 
the infant. 

“ Maybe there isn’t much,” said he. “ Only 
old Nehemiah set all the Jews to rebuilding 
the walls of Jerusalem, each over against his 
own house, didn’t he? It’s merely a case of 
reforming the world by reforming what lies 
nearest each man’s hand. It always struck 
me as a pretty good way.” 

“ Well, it makes me mad,” said Marie, “ to 
see poor little helpless babies put in charge of 
ignorant nurse maids, and made to suffer for 
it all their lives. Someday that child, per- 
haps, will have trouble with his eyes; he will 
get headaches in school, and be apparently 
dull and irritable, and be considered a bad 
child; and maybe he will get punished un- 
justly, which will sour his temper for life. 


io2 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


And what will really be the matter is nothing 
in the world but a nurse maid’s carelessness.” 

“ We are serious to-day,” said Philip. 

“ We have to be serious once in a while,” 
said the girl, laughing, and trying to shake off 
her mood, which, in truth, gave her a sug- 
gestion of executive self-reliance that was 
rather disconcerting to the man. Perhaps it 
is always a little disconcerting to a man to 
find executive self-reliance in a woman, but 
certainly so when he is bent on playing a 
game of sentiment. 

They strolled rather gravely through the 
Run-away Place, talking of common things, 
till they were confronted by a baby with a 
bugle. The baby, which was a boy baby 
about half past four, faced them on the path, 
raised his bugle to his lips, and blew a mighty 
blast — at least, a mighty quantity of breath 
was expended, though the resultant sound was 
somewhat disproportionate, and hardly set the 
wild echoes flying. 

“ What wouldst thou, Childe Roland?” 
inquired Philip. 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 103 

Childe Roland appeared a trifle nonplussed 
at this answer to his summons, and fled pre- 
cipitately down the path to his mother. Philip 
watched him, smiling. 

“ How like the rest of us,” he said. “ We 
march up to the Great Unknown, and blow a 
great blast of defiance — and then we run 
away. And usually the Great Unknown is 
quite harmless, like you and me, even kindly 
disposed, in fact.” 

“ Do you really want to be a philosopher? ” 
asked Marie. 

“ W ant to be? I can’t help being,” he re- 
plied, grandiloquently. 

The deep down twinkle of a secret purpose, 
a twinkle he was beginning to know, gathered 
in Marie’s eyes. 

“ Have you a pencil, and some paper, and 
a watch? ” she asked. 

He fished in his pockets. “ All of them,” 
he answered. 

“ Then sit down on this bench, and do just 
as I tell you. We will now conduct an investi- 
gation in pure science. The proper study of 


104 THE RUN-AWAY place 

mankind is children. We will observe Childe 
Roland for half an hour.” 

Philip looked puzzled. “ The proper study 
of mankind is womankind — or woman un- 
kind,” he said. “ I don’t want to study 
Childe Roland for half an hour. Besides, 
maybe he won’t stay here half an hour.” 

“ Then we will follow him,” she answered. 
“ You do as I say. However, we will make 
it fifteen minutes.” 

The command was peremptory. 

“ Yes, marm,” he said meekly. “ But 
please stop Willie Smith kicking me under the 
desk.” 

“ Willie,” said Marie, turning on the seat, 
“ stop kicking Philip. I don’t want to speak 
to you again ! ” 

“ You sound quite professional,” said 
Philip. 

Marie smiled to herself. “ Now behave, 
and do as I tell you,” she said. “ What time 
is it?” 

He told her. 

“ Good,” she replied. “ We will begin in 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL ioj 

three minutes, exactly on the hour. Have 
your paper ready. We will watch Childe 
Roland carefully, and you will put down 
everything he does, particularly everything 
that involves muscular movement.” 

“Will I?” said Philip. “Won’t I get 
neuritis? Childe Roland seems to me pre- 
ternaturally lacking in repose. And why will 
I?” 

“ First, you will because you are nice, and 
don’t want me to get neuritis,” said Marie. 
“ And second, you will because you want to 
be scientific.” 

“ But it doesn’t sound scientific, it sounds 
silly.” 

“ A great many scientific things sound silly 
to the unlearned,” said Marie, grandly. 
“ Now begin. See, Roland has blown his 
bugle again. Put that down quick.” 

So Philip put down at the top of a sheet 
of paper, “ Blew bugle,” and turned to watch 
the little boy. 

Have you ever watched a child at play for 
fifteen minutes, and tried to set down on paper 


io6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

everything he did, every motion that he 
made? To take down a verbatim report of 
one of Bishop Brooks’ addresses must have 
been very much such a feat. Philip grew in- 
terested. He watched and wrote, and wrote 
and watched, chuckling to himself every now 
and then. Childe Roland continued at his 
“ motor activities,” quite unconscious of being 
an experiment. But Childe Roland’s mother 
kept a suspicious eye on the pair of watchers. 

When the fifteen minutes had expired, 
Marie said, “ Now read what you have writ- 
ten.” 

And this is what Philip read: 

FIFTEEN MINUTES WITH A BABY DYNAMO, OR, 
WHY I AM NOT A PARENT 

Blew bugle 

Sat down 

Got up 

Ate a peanut 

Found a newspaper 

Brought paper to mother 

Asked mother to read paper 

Didn’t listen 

Ran to near-by tree 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 107 

Ran back again 
Sounded on the bugle horn 
Ate another peanut 
Ran to mother 
Ran away again 

Tripped over stick and dropped bugle horn 
Cried 

Was picked up and kissed 

Stopped crying 

Picked up a stick 

Dug with stick 

Dirt flew in mother’s face 

Was slapped 

Cried again 

Stepped on bugle horn 

Picked it up 

Tried to sound upon it 

No sound 

Tried again, puffing out cheeks with effort 
No result, and cried again 
Brought bugle to mother 
Was lectured 

Threw bugle horn on ground 

Saw a squirrel 

Chased squirrel up a tree 

Saw little boy 

Hugged little boy 

Ran to mother 

Got a piece of chalk and drew picture of a girl 
on the concrete walk. [Sir Caspar Purdon Clark, 


io8 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

director of the Museum of Art, passing by, saw it, 
and exclaimed, “ Ah, a sketch by Glackens ! Shock- 
ing, shocking! ”] 

Threw chalk away 

Waved arms up and down 

Ran to mother 

Stepped on her toe 

Was slapped 

Cried again 

Saw a squirrel 

Held out peanut to squirrel 

Squirrel came for nut 

Clapped hands for joy, and ran to tell mother 

Mother’s interest perfunctory 

Ran down path 

Was called back 

Asked, “ Why? ” 

Kicked bugle horn 
Sat down 
Stood up 
Jumped 

Chased a squirrel 
Came back to mother 
Asked mother for something 
Mother gave him tin soldier 
Played with tin soldier 
Dropped tin soldier 
Mother picked it up 
Took it again 
Broke head off tin soldier 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 109 

Cried 
Sat down 
Stood up 
Fell down 

Fell on chalk, and drew another portrait figure 
(Everett Shinn, this time) 

Stood up 
Ran around 
Sat down 

Picked up bugle horn 
Tried to sound it 
No sound 
Cried again 
Still crying — time up 

“ It seems too bad to give this interesting 
story an unhappy ending,” said Philip, “ but 
Truth — we must have Truth, you know! 
Now, if you don’t mind, will you tell me the 
Why?” 

“ Just a little investigation of the motor 
activities of children, for my personal satis- 
faction,” answered Marie. “ I’ve been won- 
dering if the schools for the little tots do all 
they ought to do for the best interests of 
the tots, all they might do, in fact.” 

“ I’ve always said, myself,” remarked 


no THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


Philip, sagely, “ that education is getting too 
full of frills and Froebelows.” 

Marie ignored this frivolity. 

“ How many things did Childe Roland do 
with his body in fifteen minutes? ” she asked, 
leaning over the sheet of paper. 

Philip counted them. 

“ Somewhere round seventy, that I’ve got 
down,” he answered. “ I won’t swear that 
I didn’t miss any. In fact, I guess I missed 
most of the variations. I had time only for 
the themes.” 

“ You see what the problem is?” Marie 
went on. “ Does the school provide any ad- 
equate opportunity for the muscular develop- 
ment of the child who comes to it at four, 
five or six years of age? Does it give oppor- 
tunity for the physical exercise upon which 
the development of the brain so largely de- 
pends? Up to seven years, a child sleeps 
twelve hours out of the twenty-four. What 
he does in the other twelve, if left to him- 
self, that is, to Nature, Childe Roland has 
answered in two words — he plays. 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL m 

“Two words is good! ” said Philip, hold- 
ing out the paper. 

“ The waking life of a natural child is 
simply and solely a play life,” Marie went on, 
intent upon her subject. “ And it is so for 
reasons that have their foundations deep in 
biology and racial development ” 

“ I once read Baldwin ! ” Philip interjected. 
“ It all comes back to me now ! ” 

The girl was hurt. “ Very well,” she said, 
“ I won’t go on, if you don’t wish it. I 
thought you wanted me to explain why we 
watched the baby. Excuse me. We will 
talk about something more interesting.” 

Philip grew penitent instantly. “ Forgive 
me,” he cried. “ But I couldn’t help it — 
those phrases — ‘ biology ’ — ‘ racial develop- 
ment ’ — they bring back the wise head of 
Professor Royce, wagging behind the desk, 
and poor little me wildly trying to understand 
and going down for the third time in the deep 
sea of psychology. Please go on. I do 
want to know. Perhaps I can understand 
with you as professor.” 


na THE RUN- AWAY PLACE 

“ Well,” said Marie, not entirely molli- 
fied, “ the child plays, and if left to himself 
he plays at those things which will tend to 
his best development. That is his instinct. 
It is foolish to suppose that only animals have 
instincts. He plays at those things which 
have made for biological fitness since the 
dawning of the race. And those activities of 
his are mostly concerned with the movements 
of the large muscle groups, and they are con- 
stant in nothing but change. And this activ- 
ity is expressive of the child and indicative 
of his needs because he instinctively does the 
things his body demands.” 

“ Just as a kitten chases a spool,” said 
Philip. 

“ Exactly,” said Marie. “ Now, the point 
is here, and you would see it plainer if you 
had made a fifteen minute observation of a 
child in a kindergarten or a lower primary 
school — isn’t the little child in school, under 
present conditions, subjected to artificial mus- 
cular restriction for a quarter, at least, of his 
waking time, and through this restriction is he 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 113 

not doomed, perhaps, to a lesser brain devel- 
opment? ” 

“Sure he is!” cried Philip. “Now I 
know what’s the matter with me ! ” 

Then he hastened to add, more seriously, 
“ But you can’t have Run-away Places all over 
big towns, and you can’t always have parents 
who know how to teach. Some of ’em who 
could aren’t willing to. You’ve got to have 
schools.” 

“ Yes,” said Marie, “ you’ve got to have 
schools of course. But sooner or later you’ve 
got to realize that the schools must be divided 
into smaller classes, that they must give 
greater opportunity for large physical work 
and play. Every school ought to have a gar- 
den. A kindergarten is not a garden at all 
when it’s forty small, active baby dynamos 
cooped up in one tiny room, with a tired 
teacher trying to hold the lid down.” 

“ ‘ A tired teacher trying to hold the lid 
down,’ ” said Philip. “ So that’s the matter 
with you? ” 

“ Who said there was anything the matter 


1 1 4 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

with me?” she inquired. “Why will you 
reduce everything to personalities? ” 

“ The singular noun, please,” said Philip. 

“ It is usually supposed to be a woman who 
reduces everything to personalities,” said she. 

“ It usually is,” he answered. 

"I don’t,” said Marie. 

Philip smiled broadly. 

“Thus proving it?” he inquired. 

“ I knew you would say that,” she retorted. 

“ But not quite soon enough ! ” said he. 
“ Alas ! you will be admitted to Plato’s Ideal 
Republic, though; and I sha’n’t.” 

“Why?” she asked. 

“ Because you are a teacher, or a scientist, 
or something wise like that. And I’m only a 
poet. Plato, you remember, sadly but firmly 
kicked the poets out.” 

“ I thought you were a philosopher,” said 
Marie. 

“ That was half an hour ago,” he an- 
swered. “ I have decided since to be a poet.” 

“ Poets are well enough in their way,” she 
remarked. 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 115 

“But not in anybody else’s way?” he 
asked. 

“ That depends ” she began. 

“ On what ? ” said he. “ On the poetry ? ” 

“ No,” she replied, “ on the poet.” 

“ Oh,” said Philip. “ And will you give 
specifications of desirability?” 

“ A certain impersonality in poets is de- 
sirable,” she answered. “ Or shall I say, a 
certain childishness? ” 

“ But I don’t agree with you at all,” said 
he. “ The essence of poetry is its personal- 
ity. The more personal, the better the 
poetry.” 

“Nonsense,” Marie replied. “Look out 
now over the Run-away Place. See that 
sweep of green lawn, and the moving car- 
riages, and the splashes of gold sunlight, and 
far off, between the trees, that pile of build- 
ings like a single great castle guarding its 
huge estate. If you wrote a lyric about it, 
there would be nothing personal in your 
poem.” 

“ If I wrote a lyric about it,” he answered, 


ii 6 THE RUN- AWAY PLACE 

“ there would be nothing that wasn’t personal 
in my poem.” 

The girl started to reply; but she met his 
glance, and grew uneasily silent. 

“ No, not a thing,” he went on. “ It is a 
gay and colorful scene, I admit — just now. 
But why is it a gay and colorful scene? Tell 
me that.” 

“ Because the Lord and Frederick Law 
Olmsted made it such,” she replied. 

Philip smiled. “ I am willing to credit 
Olmsted with Central Park,” he said, “ but 
I can hardly bring myself to blame the Lord 
for Senator Clark’s mansion or the Plaza 
Hotel; though, as the French say, the Lord 
must be modest, since He made man in His 
image. No, your answer is wrong. Try 
again.” 

“ It is the only answer I have,” she replied, 
stolidly. 

“ Well,” said he, “ it is a gay and colorful 
scene, an appropriate frame for a lyric, be- 
cause you are you and I am I and we are here 
together. Isn’t that the answer? ” 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 117 

“ Don’t you suppose it is a gay and colorful 
scene for that man on the next bench?” she 
asked. 

“ Isn’t that the answer? ” 

“ It is the same scene for everybody who 
looks upon it. It would be the same scene 
if you were in Salem and I was in Siam,” she 
remarked. 

“Isn’t that the answer?” 

“Look!” she cried. “How rosy that 
drift of steam is from the castle roof. It 
looks like a plume, or a banner. That’s it, a 
banner! ” 

“ Isn’t that the answer?” 

“ No ! ” said Marie. 

“ Isn’t that the answer? ” 

“ It — it might be, if you were only sensi- 
ble,” she admitted slowly. 

“ What is sensible? ” he asked. 

“ Sensible is being ten years old, as you 
promised to be,” she replied. 

“ But a little while ago you would have it 
that I grow up, and be scientific,” he com- 
plained. 


1 1 8 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ That is quite different,” said she. “ I 
don’t want you to grow up, and be silly.” 

“ Marie,” said he suddenly, “ who are 
you?” 

She shook her head. 

“ Come,” he urged, “ I am Childe Roland, 
blowing my bugle before the Great Un- 
known.” 

Still she shook her head. 

“ I find you this morning,” he went on, 
“ not in a Run-away Place mood at all. I 
find your other self, your out-there-south-of 
Fifty-ninth-Street self, in the ascendant. I 
don’t know anything about that self, except 
that it appears to be powerful learned. I 
haven’t any admission to that self. You peep 
out at me from the Dark Tower for a mo- 
ment, and then pull up the draw-bridge in 
my face. You won’t listen to my bugle call.” 

“ But aren’t you terrified at the Great Un- 
known?” she asked, glancing at him out of 
the side of her eyes. 

“ Not terrified, but baffled,” he replied, 
“ and grievously hurt.” 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 119 

“Hurt?” She unconsciously let a note 
of solicitude into her voice. 

“ Yes, hurt,” he cried. “ You don’t play 
fair. When there’s a bugler at your gates 
you should go out and see what he wants. 
That’s in the rules.” 

“What — what does he want?” said 
Marie, in a low voice. 

Philip leaned toward her on the bench. 
“ He wants to come in,” said he. 

The girl’s fingers were pulling at her hand- 
kerchief. “ Without knowing what is in- 
side? ” she queried. 

“ He has seen a child on the battlements 
and a face at the door,” said Philip. 

“ But the little child has come out to meet 
him,” she said. “ Is that not enough? ” 

“ No,” he answered, “ that is not enough.” 

“ Perhaps nobody but the child has heard 
the bugle,” she said. 

“ But the face at the door? ” he asked. 

“ That might have been an accident,” she 
replied. 

“ Are all but the child deaf? ” said Philip. 


i2o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


“ Yes, that is it, they are all deaf,” she 
answered, hastily. 

“ Then I shall blow again, and blow a 
mighty blast,” said he. 

“ They are all very deaf,” said Marie. 

“ I don’t believe that,” he retorted, trying to 
look into her face. “ I will not believe that.” 

“ You — you will have to,” she replied. 

“ But the little girl — won’t she tell them? ” 
said he. 

“She is a prisoner; they never listen to 
her,” Marie answered. “ And they only let 
her run out a little way now and then.” 

“ Then she shall be freed,” cried Philip, 
“ if I have to blow the walls down ! ” 

“ You called me Nehemiah, so now you’ll 
be Joshua ? ” she smiled. 

“ Any one you like,” said he, with no trace 
of a smile on his face; “ but the walls shall 
fall, and I shall enter the Great Unknown! ” 

The girl rose. 

“ That sounds like a threat,” she said. 

“ That sounds like a defiance,” he replied. 

“ Perhaps it is,” said she. “ And the little 


BUGLER BEFORE THE WALL 121 

girl — she will have to be kept under lock and 
key during a state of siege.” 

“ Till when? ” said Philip, anxiously. 

“ Till the siege is over,” smiled Marie. 

“For ever and ever, till to-morrow? ” he 
asked. 

“ I said, till the siege is over,” she replied. 

“ Can’t there be a truce, just to give her 
fresh air? ” said he. 

Marie shook her head. “ I said, till the 
siege is over,” she reiterated. “ Good bye.” 

She moved as if to go. 

Philip stood irresolute. Finally he made 
a gesture as if flinging something away from 
him. 

“ I have thrown away the bugle horn,” he 
announced. 

“ Then the little prisoner can come out 
again,” replied Marie, smiling back at him. 

She moved away, down the path. 

Suddenly he called after her. “ The bugle 
didn’t smash!” he cried. But whether she 
heard or not he could not tell. She gave 
no sign. 


CHAPTER V 


THE OLD MEN WHO PLAYED CROQUET 



k HEY were sitting at a table by a window 


in the Casino. The window was opened. 
The warm spring breeze bore in to them 
the fragrance of young grass growing and 
the smell of gasolene. It is very probable 
that the latter odor was in the ascendant; but, 
as Child Marie pointed out, it is well to 
have a selective smeller. Occasionally, if one 
sniffed very eagerly and quickly between cars, 
one could detect the fragrance of young grass 
growing. 

It was something of an adventure for Child 
Marie to be sitting in the Casino at all, but 
to be sitting brazenly at a window table, 
screened off from the rest of the room, with 
a member of the hostile sex, unchaperoned 
— well, that was, to put it mildly, an inno- 
vation. At least, that is what she told Philip, 


122 


THE OLD MEN 123 

and a certain hilarity in her spirits seemed to 
bear her statement out. Philip was non- 
chalantly smoking a cigarette and flicking the 
ash into his ice cream saucer. 

“ I hate cigarettes,” he remarked casually. 

“Then why do you smoke them?” she 
inquired. 

“ From a painful sense of duty,” he replied. 
“ When really grown up people are being 
wicked as we are now, the gentleman always 
smokes a cigarette, and flicks the ash non- 
chalantly into the dregs of his dessert. There 
must be a deep psychological connection be- 
tween villainy and cigarettes. I wish I knew 
what it is.” 

“ Couldn’t a villain smoke a pipe? ” asked 
Marie. 

He looked at her scornfully. “ I fear you 
do not attend the playhouse,” he said. “ Fie 
could no more do it than a fat man could be 
romantic.” 

Marie looked gayly out over the Run-away 
Place. It was very live that afternoon with 
birds and children and nurse maids and taxi- 


124 THE RUN- AWAY PLACE 

cabs and limousines; an endless procession of 
motor vehicles purred by on the drive, two 
abreast, and others stood waiting under the 
trees while their occupants were in the Casino. 
Behind, in the room, was the buzz of talk, 
the clink of glasses; waiters hurried to and 
fro. The gay scene had something almost 
foreign about it, something Viennese. One 
listened for the heady rhythm of a Strauss 
waltz, to set the whole animated picture to 
appropriate music. Marie gave a sigh of 
satisfaction. “ Life is very pleasant,” she 
said. 

“ It must be,” answered Philip, “ so many 
people have complained that it is short.” 

Marie knit her brows. “ I’m afraid that’s 
clever,” said she. “ I hope, Boy, you won’t 
be clever. Anybody can be clever. The 
really clever person is the one who isn’t.” 

“ Then you’re not,” he grinned. “ Your 
remark reminds me of Carlyle, who wrote the 
gospel of silence in twenty volumes.” 

“ They are silence for me,” she smiled, and 
looked once more out on the gay Park, with 


THE OLD MEN 125 

renewed satisfaction. “ I feel as if we’d run 
away to Vienna,” she said. 

“ So do I,” he answered. “ This scene 
reminds me so much of Vienna. Don’t you 
adore Vienna? ” 

“ I guess so,” she replied, with the shade 
of a smile, “ I was never there.” 

“ Neither was I,” said Philip. 

Further reminiscences of travel were inter- 
rupted by the arrival of a motor party at 
the nearest table in the room behind, one 
might say a typical motor party. It consisted 
of four persons, a man and three women. 
Philip peeped through the curtains, and has- 
tily computed their combined weight at 796 
pounds, in which total the man’s weight was 
not the most conspicuous item. 

“ We’ve heard for some hundreds of 
years,” said he, “ about the Fair Sex. I’m 
going to write an epoch making essay on the 
Fat Sex.” 

“ With a sub-title, ‘ Schopenhauer in the 
Tenderloin ’ ? ” asked Marie. 

“ Not at all,” he answered. “ If the issue 


126 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

only were so local ! But it isn’t — it is uni- 
versal. Diana of the Crosswinds, down there 
on the Madison Square Garden tower, justi- 
fies the pun I once made about her. I 
said Saint Gaudens had imagined a vane 
thing ” 

“ Did you say that?” asked Marie. 

“Yes, I did. And it’s a good joke, too! 
A vain thing she is, indeed, for she is a 
feminine ideal. In all her divine nudity she 
catches the sunlight on her slender limbs, and 
the winds of heaven caress her for love of 
her loveliness, her springing grace and lithe, 
keen power. And down below, their eyes 
on the shop windows, her mortal sisters pass 
along in endless procession, trussed up on 
heels of dizzy height, encased in corsets, 
buried beneath hats of unimaginable ugliness 
with brims almost as wide as the ladies below, 
incapable of active exertion, fat, unlovely. 
And them we still call the Fair Sex! It is a 
sad comment on what our own sex must be.” 

“Hear, hear!” cried Child Marie. 
“ What a gallant gentleman you are. I’m 


THE OLD MEN 127 

glad I have to work so hard. I suppose you 
wouldn’t look at me if I were fat? ” 

“ Not if I could help it,” he laughed. 
Marie shook her head sadly. “ You’re 
right, though,” she said leaning toward him 
and speaking low. “ Did you see that two 
hundred pounds of loveliness in lavender sit 
down just now ? ” 

“ No, I only heard.” 

“ Well, she sat down with the abrupt final- 
ity of the well corseted fat woman. It’s al- 
ways sadly funny. You know how it is with 
such a woman. Conversation ceases for the 
moment. She must concentrate on her task. 
She moves ponderously to the selected seat, 
faces away, assumes a put-your-trust-in-Grand- 
Rapids-and-let-her-go expression, and slumps. 
Being so well upholstered (the lady, not the 
chair) she feels no pain. Rather do that 
little grunt and the creak of — of something 
invisible, signify the strain of a sudden change 
in attitude, as when a heavily laden schooner 
comes about on the other tack. For an in- 
stant surprise at the sudden slump is written 


128 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

on her face. Then she beams at the success- 
ful outcome and resumes the conversation.” 

Philip glanced again at the two hundred 
pounds of loveliness in lavender. It was now 
engaged in the pleasant occupation of consum- 
ing three chocolate eclairs and a high ball. 

“ Poor thing,” he remarked, “ she’s had no 
lunch for an hour! I wonder what she’d do 
if she had to walk? Can you fancy her on 
the Crawford Bridle Path?” 

“ Can you fancy her outside of a city at 
all, except in a motor car?” said Marie, 
seriously. “ She’s an urban product. I think 
I want to go away from here.” 

Just then the man in the motor party spoke 
up loudly, smacking his lips first as he set 
down his glass. 

“ What’s the use of going to the country,” 
he said to his companions, “ when you can sit 
right here and see the green grass and hear 
the birdies — and call a cab ? ” 

“ I think I want to go, too,” said Philip. 

But he went laughing. 

As they stood for a moment on the steps, a 


THE OLD MEN 129 

hansom trailed by. The driver, a lank, sol- 
emn, elderly gentleman with a plug hat, see- 
ing them, signaled for a fare. They shook 
their heads, and he drove on, to be swallowed 
up in the stream of motor traffic, a two- 
wheeled anachronism. 

“ Poor thing,” said Marie, u he looks a 
ghost out of the past, like a bicycle or a 
bustle.” 

“ I wonder what becomes of the cabbies? ” 
said Philip. “ When the Elevated road was 
electrified all the engine drivers got jobs as 
motor men. But when the hack trade was 
taxicabbed the chauffeurs all seem to have 
come from a totally different sphere of life. 
Look at them as they go by. They are all 
young and natty and keen eyed, with little 
mustaches, and the air of lady killers.” 

“ They are willing to kill anybody,” Marie 
interjected. 

“ In fact,” he continued, “ they seem to 
belong almost to a different race of beings 
from the long-faced, funereal gentlemen, or 
the round-faced, rubicund, jolly-monkish gen- 


130 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

tlemen, who used to cruise around Union 
Square in deep seagoing cabs, looking for 
temporarily disabled citizens to tow to the 
home haven for salvage money. The cabs 
and hansoms are fast disappearing, but you 
never see their drivers at the wheel of a taxi. 
What becomes of these picturesque adorn- 
ments of our rapidly vanishing civilization? ” 

“ I can’t tell you,” said Marie. “ Perhaps 
they retire to their country estates.” 

They were wandering through the Park by 
now, and had come to a green lawn on a little 
plateau under the east wall, whereon were 
several elderly gentlemen silently and solemnly 
engaged in playing croquet. Marie and 
Philip paused to observe them. They were 
extremely serious over their pastime. One, 
a tall, thin gentleman, was evidently finishing 
some sort of a tournament match with a short, 
rubicund gentleman. This match was keenly 
watched by all the other old gentlemen who 
were not playing under the second set of 
arches. 

As the tall, thin old gentleman nursed his 


THE OLD MEN 


l 3 1 

red ball through the home stretch and drove 
both red and blue out against the stake, the 
spectators moved in a solemn, silent phalanx 
up to him, and gravely shook him by the hand. 
Meanwhile the short, rubicund opponent, as 
if ashamed of his defeat, tucked his mallet 
under his arm and hastened with it toward 
a little house that stood near by, under the 
trees. He seemed to be muttering something 
to himself. The game was instantly begun 
again by other players. 

Child Marie looked up and down the walk 
where she and Philip stood, in perplexity. 

“ Is it just us? ” she asked. “ See, nobody 
else is paying the slightest attention to them. 
Nobody else seems to see them at all ! ” 

“ I’ve been thinking the same thing,’’ an- 
swered Philip, in an awed whisper. “ That 
lawn isn’t a play ground. Folks aren’t al- 
lowed on it. Yet nobody is interfering with 
them . Nobody’s stopped to look down on 
them from over the Avenue wall, either. I 
don’t believe anybody does see them but you 
and me — and I’m not sure about you.” 


132 THE RUN- AWAY PLACE 

“ I’m going to find out,” she answered, and 
turned to a pleasant faced nurse maid who was 
passing. 

“ Do you know what game those old gentle- 
men are playing? ” she asked. 

The nurse maid looked in the direction her 
finger pointed, puzzled. 

“ I don’t see no old men,” she said. “ Only 
somebody mowing the grass.” 

And she passed on, with a backward glance 
at the pair who were regarding each other in 
mute astonishment. 

Presently they turned simultaneously to- 
ward the lawn. Yes, the old gentlemen were 
still at it, and the short, rubicund old gentle- 
man had returned from the little house, minus 
his mallet, and now stood near one stake under 
a tree, looking on. In defiance of all Park 
regulations Marie and Philip straddled the 
low fence and walked across the soft turf till 
they stood directly behind him. 

“ Pardon us,” said Philip. 

The short, rubicund old gentleman evi- 
dently had not heard them approach. He 


THE OLD MEN 133 

gave a start of surprise, almost as if he were 
pulling back on something. 

“ Whoa ! ” he said. 

Then he turned around and touched his 
hat, which was an oddly old-fashioned stove 
pipe, shading green with age. 

“ Pardon me, Miss,” he said, “ and you, 
Sir. But folks so seldom address us here.” 

“ Why is that? ” they both asked. 

“ Well, it’s this way — they don’t see us.” 

“ But how did we see you?” asked Philip. 
“ We know the rest don’t.” 

“ Want an automobile? ” inquired the rubi- 
cund old gentleman. 

“ I do not, I hate ’em,” said Philip. 

“ So do I, especially the smell,” said Marie. 
“ But what has that to do with our question ? ” 

“ That’s your answer,” said the old gentle- 
man, genially. He was not, they observed, 
such a very old gentleman ; and neither were 
the others, still silently engaged in their cro- 
quet. There was something oddly old fash- 
ioned about them, which gave them their 
aspect from a distance of extreme antiquity. 


i 3 4 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ But,” said Philip, “ we don’t understand 
you.” 

“ Why,” said the rubicund one, brushing 
his old hat on his sleeve, “ it’s simple enough. 
We’re invisible in the Park to everybody who 
sports a benzine buggy, or wants to sport 
one. That’s why you startled me so. I ain’t 
been spoke to here before, since a year ago 
come next month. Waldorf Willie over 
there — he’s the tall one that just licked me 
because I was up all night finishin’ Royce’s 
‘ Philosophy of Loyalty,’ and my eye was 
off — Willie’s never been spoke to, and he’s 
been playin’ here goin’ on three year come 
next July.” 

“ I see,” said Marie. “ It’s all quite plain 
now.” 

“ But I don’t see at all,” said Philip. 
“ It’s not a bit plain.” 

“ Boy,” she whispered, “ the hat — the 
‘Whoa’ — his gesture — Waldorf Willie — 
don’t you see ? They are the cabbies! ” 

Philip drew in a long breath. “ Gee, I 
believe you’re right ! ” he exclaimed. “ That’s 


THE OLD MEN 13$ 

why you have to hate motor cars to see 
them.” 

“ Of course.” 

“ But the Park authorities, how do they 
come to let you play on this lawn?” asked 
Philip. 

The old cabbie laughed. “ They don’t 
know,” he answered. “ They all want 
bubbles too. Even the guy over there run- 
nin’ the horse mower, he wants an auto 
mower. We pull up the arches when we see 
him cornin’, and put ’em down again when 
he’s past.” 

“ Couldn’t he mow right through them? ” 
inquired Marie. 

“Certainly not!” exclaimed the cabbie. 
“ They are real arches.” 

“But why do you play croquet?” said 
Philip. 

“Why shouldn’t we play croquet?” said 
the cabbie. 

As there seemed to be no conclusive answer 
to this, Philip watched the games for a bit 
in silence. 


136 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ It’s an odd way you play, anyhow,” he 
said presently. 

“ We appointed a rules committee two 
years ago,” said the cabbie, “ to eliminate the 
brutality from the game.” 

“ The what? ” exclaimed the children. 

“ The brutality,” answered the elderly 
gentleman. “ We no longer use flamingoes.” 

“ Have you eliminated the Queen of 
Hearts, too?” asked Marie. 

“ Mercy,” said the cabbie, “ she eliminated 
herself! She bought an eighty horse power, 
bright red tourin’ car some while ago, 
and was smashed up speedin’. Hadn’t you 
heard? ” 

Philip passed his hand over his brow. 
“ No,” he said. “ It didn’t get into the 
papers, I guess.” 

“ Funny,” remarked the cabbie. “ I don’t 
s’pose you saw Waldorf Willie’s poem the 
other day, either, did you ? ” 

They shook their heads. 

“ It was called ‘ An Ode on a Distant Pros- 
pect of a Hansom Cab,’ It was written en- 


THE OLD MEN 137 

tirely in taximeter; really quite clever. I wish 
I had a copy to show you.” 

“ How odd,” said Marie. 

“ What’s odd? ” asked the old cabbie, with 
some asperity. 

“ Why — why — a cabbie’s knowing Gray’s 
poems, and writing odes,” said Marie. 

“ Not at all, not at all,” the other replied. 
“ I suppose you’ve heard of Francis Thomp- 
son? Well, he drove a cab, didn’t he?” 

As he undoubtedly did drive a cab, and 
as the old gentleman was plainly rather 
touchy on the point, Marie hastened to change 
the subject. 

“ You spoke of reading Prof. Royce’s 
* Philosophy of Loyalty,’ ” she said. “ Are 
you a disciple of Prof. Royce? ” 

“ Oh, no,” answered the cabbie, cheery 
once more, “ I am a Pragmatist.” 

“ Gee,” said Philip, “ don’t tell me you are 
a member of the Harvard Club ! ” 

“ The nearest I ever got to that,” answered 
the other, “ was the curb. No, Sir, I learned 
myself.” 


138 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

(“ He done a good job,” whispered Marie 
in Philip’s ear.) 

“ Did you do it all while you were driving 
a cab?” asked Philip. 

“Yes, Sir. The Tenderloin drove me to 
drink — of the Pierian Spring. I developed 
bibliomania in self defence. Would you like 
to hear about it?” 

His rubicund face shone with amiable van- 
ity. To refuse him would have been cruel. 
But neither wished to refuse. 

“ Come and sit on a bench,” said Marie, 
“ and tell us.” 

He shook his head. “ No,” he answered. 
“ I dassn’t. Somebody is sure to sit down 
on me.” 

“ I’ll put my cane across you,” said Philip. 
To this the old gentleman consented. They 
hunted out a secluded bench, and with Philip’s 
stick across his lap he sat between them and 
told the tale of 


THE OLD MEN 


i39 


Gbe ffitblfomaniacal Cabbie 

“There’s nothin’ to this line o’ dope the 
near high-brows hand out, who write books 
about ‘ In Key with the Eternal Verities,’ and 
such like,” he began, “ and the Ethical Tor- 
ture teachers, too — I mean this dope that any- 
body can make himself what he wants to be, 
if he wants to be it hard enough. It’s like the 
from-the-log-cabin-to-the-White-House pipe 
dream that any boy can be President, they 
used to hand us down in the old North Moore 
Street school when I was a kid. The will to 
believe in yourself is all very well, if it don’t 
end by sourin’ you on the cosmos when your 
vanity gets the jolt that’s waitin’ for it. God 
started out to make me a poet — He gave me 
an Irish mother. But He botched the job 
by givin’ me an English father. I tried to 
mend the bungle for myself an’ be a Keats. 
I ended by bein’ a cabbie. 

“ The best compromise I could strike with 
my environment was to collect books, since 
I couldn’t write ’em. I’ve never turned out 


i 4 o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

a poem like Shelley, but I got a copy of the 
first edition of ‘ The Cenci,’ an’ there was 
only two hundred and fifty of ’em printed! 
Many a time, as I’ve waited out in the slush 
for a G. M. Cohan show to get over, so’s 
I could take my fare an’ his fat fairy to some 
gilded lobster palace, waited blowin’ on my 
fingers an’ swingin’ my arms, and looked at 
by my fare when he did come like the scum 
under his feet, many a time, I say, I’ve 
thought how I’d be ashamed to go to a G. M. 
Cohan show, but my fare, he wouldn’t read 
six pages of 4 The Cenci,’ an’ couldn’t tell 
a first from an East Aurora re-print bound 
in lame — I mean limp — leather, lined with a 
piece o’ yellow silk petticoat. It was a damn 
lot o’ comfort, I want to tell yer — I begs your 
pardon, Miss!” 

“ Not at all,” said Marie. “ I agree with 
you entirely.” 

“ Well, now, you’re the right sort, you are,” 
said the cabbie. “ I’ll bet your beau here went 
to college and learnt all about books easy. It 
wa’n’t easy for me. I couldn’t go to college, 


THE OLD MEN 141 

I had to go to work in the stable. Saint 
Gaudens, him as made the bronze statue down 
there of the gent who said, ‘ War is Hell,’ 
he had genius. He didn’t go to no college, 
neither, but he could make things with his 
hands, an’ he’d have carved his way up if 
he’d started as low as I did. But I didn’t 
have no genius drivin’ me. I just knew I 
loved to read, and I made rhymes about 
things — mostly my teachers ; and my old Irish 
mother, God rest her soul, told me tales of 
the fairies back in the old country. But when 
I went to work I just took natural to the 
stables, an’ never knowed there was anythin’ 
else I could do. Fact, I don’t know it now — 
there wa’n’t nothin’ else. God made me a 
cabbie.” 

The old man lapsed into silence, rubbing 
his hat. 

“ But the collecting? ” Philip prompted. 

“ Well, you see, it was this way,” he con- 
tinued; “ a cabbie has lots o’ time to think. 
Most folks has more time to think than they 
ever use, I reckon. I got to thinkin’ one day 


i 4 2 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

that what a man did for a livin’ didn’t so 
much matter as how he lived. It was easy 
enough to say we was as good as the folks 
we drove to the opera, but I’d never really 
believed that line o’ con, though I’d handed 
it out over the bar, like the others. But, 
thinks I this day I’m tellin’ you of, I can 
be just as good as the swells. Not that I 
could ever eat with ’em, and talk with ’em, 
and be one of ’em. There were some of ’em 
I wouldn’t want to talk with, and that’s 
straight. But, thinks I, there must be things 
a man turns over in his nut which don’t have 
nothin’ to do with birth or money, which a 
cabbie can have as well as a swell — ideas and 
things; and maybe, thinks I, they’re just as 
good an’ can make him just as happy as a 
brown stone house, and joy rags, and an opera 
box. 

“ So I took to wonderin’ what one o’ these 
things was that I could get ahold of, never 
dreamin’ it might be books, till one day, 
waitin’ for a fare on Fourth Avenue, I picks 
up a copy of Chaucer out front of a second 


THE OLD MEN 143 

hand shop, an’ opened to somethin’ I never 
forgot. Old Mortality used to open his 
Bible chance like, an’ go by what he read. 
Well, I’ve went by what I read in Chaucer. 
It was hard readin’ for me then. You know 
Artemus Ward says Chaucer was a great pote, 
but he couldn’t spell. But I made out the 
meanin’. I’ve never forgot them lines. 
They go this way: 

“ And as for me, though than I konne but lyte, 
On bokes for to rede I me delyte, 

And to hem yive I feyth and full credence, 
And in myn herte have hem in reverence 
So hertely, that ther is game noon, 

That fro my bokes maketh me to goon.” 

“ Isn’t there one game, croquet?” put in 
Marie, slyly. 

The old cabbie grinned. “ Maybe so,” 
he said. “ But not in them days. Well, I 
just set to work to learn myself about books. 
Of course, I’d read story books, and maga- 
zines, and some his’tries. But I wanted to 
know about real books, an’ to have real books 
of my own. When I think o’ them days! 


144 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Well, I even dreamed o’ writin’ a book my- 
self, a poetry book. I sat up nights grindin’ 
at it for a month — an’ then I read Keats, an’ 
tore it all up.” 

“ To have the courage ! ” said Philip, half 
to himself. 

“ Well, it come hard,” said the cabbie. 
“ But, Lor’, what stuff it was ! So that learnt 
me one thing — I wa’n’t no poet. After that 
I just stuck to readin’ and collectin’.” 

“ But,” said Philip, “ you say you have a 
first of ‘ The Cenci.’ That’s one of the 
rarest of Shelley items. How did you learn 
about firsts, and how could you afford to 
buy them? ” 

“ It was a dead man’s butler that put me 
next,” he answered. 

Marie and Philip looked at him in wonder. 

“ Fact,” he continued. “ The family lived 
down on East Fifteenth Street, which was 
some swell in them days — old Knickerbocker 
family, fine old father with a big library, an’ 
children who cared more for the ponies. 
Well, I used to bring home the son from 


THE OLD MEN 145 

places often, an’ got to know the butler — 
sometimes needed his help. Pardon these 
details, Miss ! One day the old fellow died 
an’ then, a bit after, the butler showed me 
fifty bones he’d got from a second hand book 
dealer for a barrel o’ pamphlets an’ stuff the 
family’d cleaned off the old man’s shelves. 
Thinks I, I’ll go see it. I liked the old man, 
an’ I had a hunch there might be some New 
York historical stuff in the barrel. Drivin’ 
around the streets all day, you get a hankerin’ 
to know somethin’ about their history. 
That’s how I learnt all the Park gates here 
have names. Ever know that? That’s the 
Stoodent’s Gate down at the Plaza. It’s the 
Children’s Gate on the Avenue, at Seventy- 
second Street. Odd, ain’t it, how nobody 
ever calls ’em by their names? 

“ Well, I went to the dealer’s, and, Holy 
Tootin’ Taxicabs, what do you think? He 
had twenty o’ them old books an’ pamphlets 
priced at over fifty plunks apiece, and was 
gettin’ it, too! 

‘‘That put me wise, all right, all right. 


146 the run-away place 

First, I began by bangin’ round the old book 
shops, and talkin’ with the dealers. Then I 
slipped up to Bangs’ when I could get off, 
an’ studied priced catalogues. I didn’t read 
nothin’ for months but stuff about collectin.’ 
An’ when I thought I knew a bit about it, 
I began to watch the death notices in the 
papers. 

“ It was the old fellers I was after, who’d 
lived in the same house for a life-time. No- 
body lives in a house in this town for a life- 
time any more. ’Bout once in twenty — maybe 
not so often — the butler’d have old stuff from 
clearin’ up the library, he was glad to let me 
look over. That’s how I started my collec- 
tion. I was makin’ good money an’ livin’ 
single, so’s I had plenty to spend. I began 
to gather in American firsts at figures you 
wouldn’t believe, an’ sellin’ duplicates enough 
to give me money to take a flyer now and 
then at Bangs’ for the big stuff, so for a while 
I was buyin’ fast. ’Course, I bought a heap 
o’ dead ones. But I got the junk weeded out 
now, and I got 800 beauts, I tell you. An’ 


THE OLD MEN 147 

what’s more, I’ve read ’em all. Them an’ 
croquet, what more does a man want? I 
guess the swells don’t put it over me much, 
after all!” 

“ What have you got? ” said Philip. 

“ Well, I ain’t no John Carter Brown, nor 
a J. Pierpont Morgan. I ain’t got a First 
Folio of Shakespeare nor a Bay Psalm Book, 
nor a whole row o’ tall Caxtons. I ain’t got 
any incunabula that are worth much, ’cept to 
me. I got one or two wormy ones just to 
show how printin’ began. They do well 
enough, and you can get ’em cheap. ’Course, 
I’d like to own the Psalter of Mentz, the 
first dated book. The edition dated 1459, 
two years later, sold for most $25,000 in 
1884. I’d have to run a taxicab to buy that 
— and it ain’t worth it! I ain’t got no Cax- 
tons, either. All the rich bugs is after Cax- 
tons now. They’re way up where the Elze- 
virs used to be, most as high as the Elzevirs 
is said to be in fool novels. When I begun 
collectin’, the Elzevirs had begun to go down, 
but the Aldines were still up. They’ve 


I 4 8 the run-away place 

knocked them down now, too. I got two 
myself. Alas, the fall in their values shows 
the decline of classic culture ! ” 

And the old cabbie sighed profoundly. 

But he soon cheered up and continued his 
catalogue. “ The first really good books I 
got,” he said, “ were Baskervilles. I ain’t got 
the Folio Bible of 1763, but I got the three 
volume Congreve, with the Kneller portrait, 
and the Esop, with the pretty vignettes. The 
Baskerville Press is goin’ to be more appre- 
ciated than it is some day; that feller could 
print, I tell you! I bought ’em in the open 
market and they represent some waitin’ in 
front o’ lobster palaces, an’ don’t you forget 
it. But most o’ my good stuff come out of 
the butlers’ barrels, and it’s Americana. T’be 
sure, I got ‘ The Cenci ’ off a butler, an’ the 
first edition of the Rubaiyat ” 

“ What! ” cried Philip, “ don’t tell me you 
have that? ” 

“ I sure have,” said the cabbie. “ Paid 
five bones for it, along with a lot o’ New 
York pamphlets and some junk. That was 


THE OLD MEN 149 

the day I most got the elephant folio of 
Audubon’s Birds.” 

Again the cabbie sighed deeply. 

“ They were hard up, that family,” he went 
on. “ I offered the daughter fifty dollars 
for the Audubon, prayin’ she didn’t know. 
And I guess she didn’t; she was nothin’ but 
a kid. But just then the widdy come into 
the room, an’ gummed the game. That’s 
where I was stung a couple o’ thousand, 
maybe more.” 

He ruminated a moment in silence. 

“ I got a first of Higginson’s ‘ New Eng- 
lands Plantation,’ ” he continued, “ out of 
another barrel. That’s good for five hundred 
plunks any time. And I got a first of 
Lowell’s Commemoration Ode. I guess 
that’s goin’ some.” 

“Hold on!” cried Philip. “There are 
limits, you know! Don’t tell me you got 
that out of a barrel.” 

“How else would I get it? You don’t 
s’pose I could buy it in open market, do you, 
an’ me a cabbie? I soaked my fares some 


ijo THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

in my day, but I wa’n’t no Shylock. I got 
a 4 White Footed Deer,’ too, off the same 
butler. Both of ’em was covered with dust. 
They’re under cover now, you can bet.” 

44 Who wrote 4 The White Footed Deer ’ ? ” 
asked Marie. 

44 Bryant,” said Philip. 44 This is incredi- 
ble. Pm going to haunt dead men’s doors.” 

44 Maybe I was born lucky,” said the old 
cabbie. 44 1 got a first of 4 Alice in Wonder- 
land ’ and 4 Through the Lookin’ Glass ’ 
’cause the kids had growed up an’ didn’t want 
’em no more. And — here’s a good one! — 
one day, way back twenty-eight years ago, I 
took a bally Britisher up from the steamer to 
his hotel, an’ he left a book in the cab, an’ 
never come for it. Guess what it was? ” 

u Tell me,” said Philip. “ I’ll believe 
anything.” 

44 It was Burton’s 4 Kasidah.’ Ever read 
it?” 

“ Yes, I’ve read it,” answered Philip, a 
little testily. 44 I’ve got it. My edition cost 
two fifty, though, and was printed in 1900. 


THE OLD MEN iji 

There were only one hundred copies of the 
first — yours. They bring something like two 
hundred and fifty when one of them turns 
up.” 

“ Exactly,” said the old cabby, with a 
genial smile, “ exactly. You know, I get my 
Omar out o’ that, instead of FitzGerald. In 
the old days when we had horse cars in New 
York I used to listen to ’em cornin’ through 
the side streets, jinglin’, janglin’ above the 
roar, an’ say to myself, over an’ over, 

Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not 
thy humble tale to tell; — 

The whisper of the Desert-wind, the Tinkling of the 
Camel’s bell. 

Sometimes I’d shut my eyes, an’ most make 
myself think for a minute I was in the desert. 
An’ somehow the lines made me feel better, 
more contented, maybe, with bein’ a cabbie. 
I was some sore when the old horse cars 
was taken off. That’s the great thing about 
books — you keep ’em at home, where they’re 
always waitin’ for you, patient like; but you 
take ’em out with you, too, an’ they come 


152 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

at you sudden in bits, sometimes, makin’ the 
place where you are or the thing you’re doin’ 
all glorified.” 

“ Oh, lovely ! ” cried Marie, clapping her 
hands. 

The old cabbie beamed appreciation upon 
her. 

“ Say, let an illiterate old collector give 
you two young uns a tip,” he said. “ Now, 
this is straight. You two’ll get spliced some 
day ” 

Marie turned fiery red, and Philip raised 
his hand to protest, but the old cabbie laughed 
jovially, and was not to be rebuked. 

“ You’ll get spliced some day,” he went 
on, this time turning to Philip, “ and you’ll 
have the dough to do it, which I didn’t — to 
support a madam and a book shelf at the 
same time, I mean. Now you love ’em both, 
see? I ain’t sayin’ maybe I couldn’t ’a’ kept 
a wife, but there wa’n’t no wife for me in 
my class. There ain’t many women folks 
who understand an’ love books, nohow; they 
may say they do, but they’d just as soon have 


THE OLD MEN 153 

a last edition as a first, maybe sooner. And 
there ain’t none in the class I come from. 
But your girl, here, she’s different. Now, 
you two’ll start a little library an’ it’ll grow 
and grow, an’ be a comfort to you both all 
your life long.” 

“ That depends on whether you have to 
move — the comfort, I mean,” said Marie, 
coloring hotly when she thought of the con- 
text. 

“ Folks move too much,” said the old fel- 
low. “ It’s the curse of the age. But when 
you get books, get good uns. Don’t believe 
this con about editions not matterin’. That’s 
bromide stuff. A man who’ll read a poem 
in a cheap reprint when he could read it in 
a first would wear a paste diamond when he 
could have the real stone. And it ain’t only 
what’s in the books that counts; it’s havin’ 
the fun o’ collectin’ ’em, the pride o’ ownin’ 
’em. You can’t collect nothin’ that’s more 
worth collectin’, and any man who don’t col- 
lect somethin 1 — well, he may be layin’ up for 
himself treasures in heaven, but it’s more 


154 the RUN-AWAY place 

likely he’s layin’ up to a bar. I tell you, 
it don’t matter who you are or what kind o’ 
folks you sprung from, Man’s got an instinct 
to gather round him some little bit o’ the 
good things o’ this world, an’ it’s one o’ the 
instincts that boosts him up above the beasts, 
I don’t give a tarnation damn — excuse again, 
Miss — what the preachers say. 

“ Goin’ on forty year I’ve steered a cab 
round this village an’ been the scum under 
rich dames’ silken shoes; but up in my room 
under the roof of a house where they wouldn’t 
soil their skirts by enterin’, I’ve been layin’ 
up treasures that have made more of a man 
o’ me than some o’ them ladies — which is 
Irish; that for goin’ on thirty year have been 
waitin’ for me when I gets home at night, 
like a reception of the best society; that have 
put lines o’ poetry into my head an’ comfort 
into my heart; that have learned me to see 
things interestin’ and beautiful as I drove 
round the town; and that, any time I get 
hard up, can be turned into cash every bit 
as good as stocks and bonds. They ain’t 


THE OLD MEN 


i55 

never learned me to talk right grammar, but 
ain’t the body more than the raiment? ” 

“ A great, great deal more,” said Marie, 
smiling at him. 

“ But,” said Philip, “ won’t you let us see 
your books some time? The first of Fitz- 
Gerald’s Rub ” 

The old cabbie had suddenly risen. 

“ I must be goin’ ” he said hastily. 

Before either could detain him he had 
stepped into the path, and moved quickly 
away. To their astonished eyes, he seemed 
to slip directly through a baby carriage. They 
were looking into the sun ; perhaps it blinded 
them. In another moment there was no old 
man to be seen. 

“ There ain’t no such animal ! ” gasped 
Philip, sinking back on the bench. 

“ Come on, quick! ” said Marie. 

They hastened to the croquet lawn. All 
the old men had vanished. Again they 
climbed the rail. There were no stakes nor 
arches. Yet, where the arches had been, the 


156 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

grass seemed to be worn. Just then they saw 
a Park officer hurrying toward them, ges- 
ticulating angrily — and they fled. 

“ It was good advice, just the same,” 
panted Child Marie, as she sat down in the 
summer-house by the rocks. 

Child Philip sat down beside her. 

“ It was very good advice,” he answered. 
“ I’ll bet there is something in that dead man’s 
butler game.” 

“ Boy,” said Marie, “ I don’t mean that 
at all. I mean about having good books, 
and the contents of good books, in the back- 
ground of your consciousness to add meaning 
and beauty to the more or less humdrum and 
sordid daily facts of life.” 

“ Naturally,” said Philip. “ Don’t be a 
bromide.” 

She looked at him quickly, hurt. 

“ Pardon me, Marie,” he cried, with in- 
stant penitence, putting out his hand. “ But 
I can’t get over his having a first of the 
Rubaiyat.” 

“ Are you sure he has? ” said Marie. 


THE OLD MEN 


*57 

“ I’m not sure of anything! Yes I am, 
too. I’m sure of one thing.” 

“And that is?” 

“ How many books have you got? ” asked 
Philip. 

“ I don’t know, two hundred, maybe. Of 
course, they aren’t firsts, as you say. A great 
many of them I fear are lasts. And I’m sure 
I haven’t any incunabula — whatever they are. 
But what has that got to do ” 

“ I’ve got about eight hundred,” Philip re- 
marked as if to himself. “ A lot of them 
are reference books I have to own. One 
can’t work in the Astor Library, dirty old 
hole. Of course, there’d be some dupli- 
cates ” 

“What are you talking about?” asked 
Marie. 

He looked at her oddly. “ I was just 
thinking,” he answered, “ of something the 
old cabbie said.” 

He continued to look at her, and moved 
closer on the bench. She shrank as if fright- 
ened. 


158 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ Did you notice,” he said, “ that the old 
cabbie never knew we were children?” 

“ You — you seem glad.” 

“ I am, I am very glad. He was, maybe, 
a discerning old collector after all, who 
knows? ” 

Marie rose quickly. 

“ We are children,” she said. “ We must 
be children, do you understand? If you 
grow up, Boy, I shall never come here to the 
Run-away Place again. That was our bar- 
gain; you must keep it.” 

“ Maybe 1 mustn’t, maybe I won’t, maybe 
I can’t,” he replied, smiling up at her. 

But his smile was not returned. Her face 
had grown very grave. 

“ If you won’t,” she said, “ I am very 
sorry, for I shall never see you again. Good- 
bye.” 

He sprang to her side. 

“ I won’t, I won’t, honest Injun,” he cried. 
“ I’ll be a child, an infant. I’ll google and 
drule. Only come again.” 

She smiled at him gravely. 


THE OLD MEN 159 

“ You needn’t google and drule,” she said. 
“ But next time you musn’t be over ten, and 
you must play very nicely. You mustn’t pick 
up the bugle. Will you promise? ” 

He raised his right hand. 

“ So help me! ” he said. 

So at the little gate in the wall at Sixty- 
seventh Street she left him. He watched 
her out of sight, and then turned toward the 
lawn where the old men had played croquet. 
In the centre of it, quite alone, a squirrel was 
sitting on his hind legs, eating a peanut. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE GLUEBIRD AND THE DUTCH BABY 

'“p'HE Bluebird stood on his wooden perch 
behind the glass doors of the cabinet, 
and looked out over the kindergarten room, to 
where, beyond the windows, the trees in the 
court yard were beginning to put on their 
summer green. 

All through the long, cold months he had 
stood so, wondering to see the bare limbs of 
autumn, wondering still more to see the white- 
ness of winter, and to feel the icy breath that 
crept sobbing through the key-hole, on the 
days when the room stood empty and silent. 
This, then, this cold breath, was the meaning 
of all those strange South feelings that drove 
one to forsake nest and comfort every year, 
and to fly, fly, fly till one almost dropped. He 
had never really understood why until now. 
How fortunate one had those irresistible 

160 


THE GLUEBIRD 161 

South feelings! He shivered as he remem- 
bered the cold that came creeping through the 
key-hole. 

Only once since he had come to live there 
had he left the cabinet, so he would have re- 
membered the occasion, even if it had not been 
connected with great events. The first of 
these events was the coming of a tree, a hem- 
lock, which appeared in the room one day. 
Then the cabinet door was unlocked, and he 
was taken out, and his wooden perch fastened 
to one of the branches, while a ring of danc- 
ing children shouted, “Fly, bluebird, fly!” 
and, “ Sing us a song! ” He had tried, but 
his voice was gone. 

The second event was that after this one 
brief, gay adventure, he had kept watch over 
an empty room for many days — how long they 
seemed ! — while outside the window there was 
much whiteness, and the wind in the key-hole 
moaned every night. Then came a day when 
the room was again full of children and chat- 
ter, and he remembered it well, because on 
that day the Dutch Baby first came to smile at 


1 62 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


him, which was the last and greatest event 
that happened to the Bluebird. 

He had never been a proud fellow as birds 
go. Of course, it was only natural that he 
should favor blue as a choice of costume, and 
he sometimes had a consciousness that the 
manners of the Robin family were not so 
delicate as his own — consider the question of 
keeping in the public eye, for instance ! But 
after the coming of the Dutch Baby, it took 
all his strength of mind to remain modest, for 
from that first morning when the smile had 
crept through the key-hole, like a breath of 
summer, and a moist finger had plastered a 
moist kiss on the glass immediately protecting 
his beak, the Dutch Baby had had eyes for 
nothing else. 

The Bird wished sometimes that it could 
hear what the Dutch Baby was saying as he 
stood in front of the cabinet, with adoring 
eyes, but the glass prevented that, and how 
seldom the door was opened! Not that he 
had minded this very much during the long, 
cold time, but now those days of eerie winds 


THE GLUEBIRD 163 

were over, and a great longing filled his soul, 
a longing to leave his wooden perch in the 
cabinet and once more to feel the swinging 
branch beneath his feet, to rock like a blue 
flower in the breeze, to play “ Hunt the 
worm ” with other sprightly comrades. He 
was afraid to try his voice, but once in the 
free air, who knew what might happen? 
Perhaps — perhaps he might even fly! And 
ever and again he looked wistfully at the 
young green beyond the windows. 

And then there came a morning when the 
Dutch Baby stood in front of the cabinet with 
a face of exalted solemnity, a solemnity aris- 
ing not from sorrow but from a too deep sense 
of anticipation. For many minutes he stood 
there, motionless, then slowly and with the 
same triumphant gravity he began to dance. 
Up and down and one — two — three, up and 
down and one — two — three, while the strains 
of “ The Mosquito Parade ” floated into the 
room. The teacher stopped in the doorway: 

“ The wine of spring,” she murmured. 

The Dutch Baby turned around, stopped 


1 64 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

one leg in mid-air, and said without punctua- 
tion, “ Goot-morning I haf a kiss for you see 
mine socks the day it iss when der Gluebird 
out comes for him I dance.” 

Long training had enabled teacher to digest 
morsels of this sort without an effort. She 
shook hands, admired the socks, took the kiss, 
and produced the key to the cabinet. The 
Bluebird’s dreams were coming true! He 
was to spend a day in the great world again. 
The Dutch Baby received him as a devout 
worshiper receives the holy bread. 

“ Ach, mein Gluebird ! ” he crooned, and 
ran his fore-finger from tip to tail. “Ach, 
mine Gluebird ! So goot you are. Like der 
sky iss you back, und der rest like mein socks. 
All day near me you shall stay, und after — ” 
here he stopped, and in his eyes began to grow 
the light of a great purpose — “ und after to 
der Park we will go, und play, und play, und 
play!” 

“ Hans,” said teacher, “ what are you 
talking about? ” 

“ To mine Gluebird wass I speaking,” came 


THE GLUEBIRD 


165 

the dignified answer. “ So long hass he not 
heard me ! Could I to mein house bring 
him ? Und to-morrow he should come back.’ , 

“ No, Hans,” said teacher. “ You come 
to-morrow, and the Bluebird will be waiting 
for you here.” 

The Dutch Baby said nothing, but the light 
of the great purpose still glowed. 

Now see on what slender threads our for- 
tunes hang, the Bluebird’s on a yard of black 
veiling which, blown by the breeze from the 
window, was hiding under the dressing table 
in Dutch Baby’s mutter’s room, while mutter 
herself hunted through bureau drawers with 
one eye on the clock. 

“ For you he’ll surely wait,” said the Dutch 
Baby’s tante. “ Never will he start for home 
alone.” 

But tante had not seen the glow of the great 
purpose, nor did she know that at the very 
moment of her comforting assurance, the 
Dutch Baby, with the Bluebird buttoned close 
to his knocking heart, was standing tip-toe on 
the corner of the street. To the east lay 


1 66 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

home, convention, the commonplace, to the 
west, freedom, adventure, glory — in a word, 
the Park. A thousand green fingers beckoned 
alluringly, a thousand invisible cords wound 
themselves about the brown and yellow socks 
and pulled away from duty. The poise for 
flight became merged into flight itself, and 
with feet that scarce touched the stones the 
Dutch Baby flew toward the beckoning green 
fingers at the end of the street. 

Only once did he pause for breath — or was 
is that? — when at last he had passed within 
the enchanted gateway, and a donkey bestrid- 
den by a ruffled cherub crossed the path in 
front of him. He cautiously undid the top 
button of his coat, and drew the Bluebird’s 
head into the light of day. 

“ Ach, mein Gluebird,” he whispered, 
“ many moneys it takes to ride, udderwise 
would I ride mit you. But soon we will play.” 

The Bluebird said nothing, — was not his 
voice gone? Yet how green the trees were! 
And that smell of earth, how well he remem- 
bered it! And what banquets it suggested! 


THE GLUEBIRD 


167 

Could it be that his mouth was watering? 
But the Dutch Baby was again in flight, and 
the swift and unaccustomed rush of air, 
against a face so long shut from it, drove the 
Bluebird’s thoughts quite away. 

How fast the Dutch Baby could travel! 
On, on, he sped, past summer-houses, across 
roads, under bridges, and finally up a little in- 
cline to a smooth, green place, which stretched 
out vastly on both sides of a broad path where 
the trees arched overhead. At intervals the 
Bluebird could see great stone pieces, with 
figures atop, standing on the green. The 
Dutch Baby glanced around him. 

“ Behind der shentleman will we sit,” he 
said, “ on der grass, und den you shall come 
out.” 


“ You see,” Child Philip was saying, argu- 
mentatively, “ I am absolutely ready and will- 
ing to fulfill my promise, but you do not help 
a bit. I am ready and willing to be ten, and 
not a day over, but here you are walking more 
or less demurely in the garb of maturity, you 


1 68 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


who insisted on being children. If the per- 
fectly natural impulse should seize me to ride 
a donkey, or drive a goat carriage, or make 
my tummy sick on the carousel, you wouldn’t 
dare do it, too. A fine child, you are ! ” 

Marie began to twinkle. “ I’d do any of 
them, if you would,” she said, “ particularly 
the goat carriages in the Mall — if it wasn’t 
for the statues ! ” 

“ If you were really a child you wouldn’t 
mind the statues — you’d rather like ’em. 
Coward, I dare you to keep your own promise 
and be ten for the afternoon.” 

Marie stopped suddenly, and looked up at 
him with eyes in which a mysterious gleam 
had replaced the twinkle. 

“ Over there,” she said, pointing, “ is some- 
thing folk call the Mall, and if we should 
cross it over the road, we’d see the statues. 
But there is another way, an enchanted way. 
Follow me.” 

She ran swiftly down a descending path, 
through a dark cavern that echoed one’s foot- 
steps, Philip pounding after. They mounted 


THE GLUEBIRD 169 

stone steps at the farther end, and found 
themselves under ancient, arching trees. And 
just at that instant the Dutch Baby and the 
Bluebird sat down behind Sir Walter Scott. 

Child Marie grasped Philip’s arm and 
pointed to the small, dark object in the rear 
of the pondering statue. 

“ What do you see? ” she exclaimed.. 

Philip looked, and they moved silently 
nearer. The Dutch Baby was taking the 
Bluebird tenderly from his bosom and putting 
him on the grass, smoothing a ruffled tail- 
feather with eager fingers. 

“ Ach, mein Gluebird,” they heard him 
say, “ here iss der Park. Now could you fly, 

und sing, und catch der ” He paused 

and wrinkled his forehead. “ Auf English I 
cannot tell it, but you could of them eat,” he 
finished triumphantly, “ und on der ground 
dey lif und choomp.” 

The Bluebird listened with upturned beak. 
Around him blew again the free air of spring; 
the grass tickled his feet, and in his nostrils 
quivered the sense of a near-by worm. Above 


i 7 o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

his head green branches waved, and a jaunty 
robin ran along the edge of the path. But 
he did not move. There was a strange stiff- 
ness in his legs, and though he knew he ought 
to be hungry, he wasn’t. His wings, too, how 
heavy they felt! 

Child Marie and Philip drew nearer, but 
the Dutch Baby heeded them not. With 
twinkling legs he gyrated in front of the 
passive Bluebird. 

“ See ! ” he cried, “ like dis you should fly, 
und now I am really a bird ! ” 

He climbed two steps up the stone pedestal 
of the statue, and with outstretched arms 
launched himself on the wings of faith. 

Child Marie gave an involuntary exclama- 
tion. u He’ll hurt himself,” she whispered. 
“ We ought to stop him.” 

“ Sh ! ” said Philip. “ No child gets hurt 
in a fairy tale.” 

The Dutch Baby picked himself up. “ A 
bird I wass,” he proudly said, “ und on der 
ground wass I looking for what to eat. Now 
you should do it,” he continued to the bird. 


THE GLUEBIRD 


171 

“ On der step will I put you, und den off der 
step shall you fly.” 

The Bluebird did his best, and, the stone 
being slippery to his unaccustomed feet, his 
flight and the Dutch Baby’s were strangely 
similar. 

“ Ach, you goot Gluebird,” crooned the 
baby, resetting him on his feet, “ you could 
fly choost der same like me.” 

Then for the first time he looked up and 
saw Child Marie and Philip. He regarded 
them gravely. Philip took off his hat. 

“ Good-afternoon,” he said, “ we should 
like to play with you if you don’t mind. And 
would you please tell us how old you are? ” 

The Dutch Baby held up an earthy palm. 
“ All of dose am I,” he said pointing to his 
fingers. 

“ We are ten,” said Philip politely, “ but 
we hope you will not think that too old.” 

The Dutch Baby looked sceptical. “ Gretch- 
en haf fiinf more fingers as me,” he said, 
“ und Gretchen haf not to be a young lady.” 

“ Never mind about Gretchen,” said Philip. 


172 THE RUNAWAY PLACE 

“You come out here and you will find us bet- 
ter to play with than that bird. We’ll do 
exactly as you say.” 

The Dutch Baby pondered for a moment, 
while again the light of a great purpose grew 
in his eyes. Then he stooped down and 
gathered the bird once more to his bosom. 

“ Choost what I say will they do,” he mur- 
mured. “ Den to der donkeys, und der goats, 
und der wasser boats will we go. Ach, mein 
Gluebird! Soldiers will we be, und sailors, 
und round we will go on der run-away horses, 
und peanuts will we buy ! ” 

He finished with a sigh of joy. 

The Bluebird assented passively. He 
wished he could overcome the lassitude that 
dragged at his legs. They seemed as power- 
less as his voice, and he could not understand 
it — he, the sprightly, the active, who erstwhile 
had outdistanced all his fellows in the north 
and southward flights. He was glad to find, 
however, that his quiescence did not lessen 
his charm for the Dutch Baby. For a 
moment after the new-comers spoke in their 


THE GLUEBIRD 


173 

slighting way he had trembled, but the Baby 
was loyal. And now the Baby turned to 
Philip and Child Marie. 

“ Come,” he said,” first we will haf a car- 
riage play.” 

“ Yes? ” said Philip, “ First we will have a 
carriage play? That will be very nice. How 
do you play it? ” 

Child Marie began to chuckle. “ I know 
how, — I certainly do,” she whispered. u I’ve 
done it a thousand times. Oh, Boy Philip, if 
only your legs weren’t quite so long! ” 

“ My legs?” said Philip, “What have 
they to do with it? ” 

Marie laughed again. “ It’s a pity we 
can’t rejuvenate our bodies as well as our 
souls,” she said. 

“ And it’s a pity that you’re talking like 
seventy instead of seven,” retorted Philip. 
“ Stop it at once.” 

The Dutch Baby had been trotting ahead 
of them toward the upper end of the Mall. 
Now he paused in front of a row of infinitesi- 
mal carriages. The motive powers lay in- 


i74 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

dolently on the ground wagging their beards 
like ancient farmers. 

“ Get in,” he commanded. “ Der driver 
I am, und to me you should pay der change.” 

Philip looked at Child Marie. “ I under- 
stand your mirth,” he said grimly, “ but I 
won’t be a quitter, not if it smashes the car- 
riage. Only, if I go this time, you’ve got 
to go next.” 

“ All right,” said Marie, “ you first.” 

Philip raised one foot to enter the chariot. 

“ Here, you,” rose a raucous voice, and an 
attendant in livery sprang from a nearby 
bench. “ Youse is too big to go in that there ; 
it’s fer children.” 

“ Pardon me,” said Philip, “ I know that. 
Pm just ten myself.” 

“ Ah, go on,” said the gentlemanly attend- 
ant, “ quit yer kiddin ! ” 

“ Exactly what you’re forcing me to do,” 
said Philip politely. “ But this young lady 
here,” he continued, “mayn’t she ride? I 
hardly think she would over-burden your 
chariot.” 


THE GLUEBIRD 175 

The attendant eyed Marie, “ Yere,” he 
said, “ she kin if she wants ter, she ain’t big 
enough to hurt it none.” 

Child Marie turned and regarded Philip 
witheringly. “Mean!” she said. “Just 
wait till we get to the carousel. That’s 
strong.” 

The Dutch Baby had climbed to the 
driver’s seat, and urged the reluctant goats 
to their feet. Now he turned to the attend- 
ant. 

“ You should stay here,” he commanded. 
“ My carriage it iss.” 

Child Marie nodded. “ I’ll see that he 
goes all right,” she whispered. Then she 
got in and sat down. “ I never realized be- 
fore how grown-up my knees are,” she ob- 
served, as the Dutch Baby cracked his whip 
and the chariot started down the length of the 
Mall. He laughed aloud. 

“ Ach, mein Gluebird,” he said joyfully, 
“ am I not der fine driver! Und my horses, 
how fast they go! All der peeples look to 
see how fine I drive.” 


i 7 6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

They certainly looked, but Child Marie 
was acutely conscious that the passenger and 
not the driver was the object of their gaze. 

Philip and the attendant waited their com- 
ing. “ Again we should go,” said the Dutch 
Baby enthusiastically, as the money was 
gravely handed over by Philip. “ Sooch a 
fine driver I am!” 

But Child Marie hastily descended. “ I 
think not,” she said. “ There won’t be time 
for all the other plays if we go again.” 

Philip laughed. “ Has it lost its flavor? ” 
he inquired. “ Oh, Child Marie, didn’t you 
really enjoy it? ” 

The girl reddened. “ I certainly didn’t, 
very much,” she said. “ I felt more or less 
foolish. And now I feel foolish to think I 
felt so. It’s nasty and complex. It didn’t 
used to be so. Anyway, I didn’t see one of 
the statues ! ” 

“ Cheer up,” said Philip, “ It takes some 
time to get acclimated. Maybe the next play 
will go better.” 

The Dutch Baby stood looking on. “ Der 


THE GLUEBIRD 


177 

next play,” he announced, “will be der 
donkeys.” 

Philip and Child Marie looked at each 
other, then laughed simultaneously. 

“ Didn’t you use to do it? ” he inquired. 

“Of course I did, didn’t you?” she 
answered. 

“ Equally of course; and you said you’d do 
it again.” 

“ I know I did,” said she, “ and I thought 
I meant it. At least, I almost thought so.” 

“ I quite did,” said Philip. “ It will be 
grand! ” 

“Ain’t you coming by me?” queried the 
Dutch Baby. 

Philip nodded. “ Lead on,” he said, “ we 
are if you’ll let us.” 

The Dutch Baby drew the girl to one side. 
“ When I hit him you should run,” he whis- 
pered. 

“ Hit him? ” said Marie. 

“ Ja,” said the other, “ it iss tag.” 

“ All right, where shall I run to ? ” she 
whispered back. 


178 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

The Baby deliberated. “ I said to der 
donkeys we would go, but first on der run- 
away horses shall we ride,” he said. “ You 
should run dere,” and he indicated the path 
to the carousel with a lordly gesture. 

“ Look here,” said Philip, “ if you two 
don’t stop whispering, I’m going home. It’s 
not fair.” 

The Dutch Baby sidled up to him and gave 
him a resounding thump on the leg. “ Tag! ” 
he shouted, and sped down the path after 
Marie, who was already diminishing into 
perspective. 

Philip jammed on his hat, seized his 
glasses, and pursued. Far ahead, a slim, blue 
Atalanta fled before him. In the middle dis- 
tance, a small pair of brown and yellow legs 
twinkled over the ground, and at his heels a 
joyous terrier, sprung from nowhere, yapped 
and capered. 

“ Go it, young feller,” shouted an onlook- 
ing urchin. 

“ Ah, his goil kin beat him,” taunted an- 
other, 


THE GLUEBIRD 


T 79 

Philip rapidly over-hauled the Dutch Baby. 
“ Tag yourself,” he cried, bending to clap the 
diminutive shoulder. 

The Dutch Baby did not pause. “ You 
should got to catch her,” he panted, “ I come 
after.” 

“ All right,” said Philip, “ here goes if 
you say so, but you’d better come along with 
me — I might get lost.” 

“ Nein,” said the other, “ der Gluebird 
likes I should go slower now, und you should 
tag der girl, und den you will find der run- 
away horses.” 

Philip nodded, and again took up the pur- 
suit of a small blue speck just disappearing 
around the corner. In his young days he had 
covered the low hurdles in twenty-five flat, but 
Child Marie had a good start, and not for 
nothing had she been known in the distant 
past as the best runner on the block. When 
Philip arrived at the carousel a slightly 
disheveled and gently panting young lady was 
seated on one of the benches, with her back 
to the path. 


180 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


He tip-toed up, and tapped her on the 
shoulder. “ Tag,” he said, “ you’re it! ” 

“ Tag nothing! ” said Marie, turning upon 
him indignantly. “ This is hunk, and you 
know it. I beat you all to pieces.” She gig- 
gled. “ I always did beat all the boys.” 

“ Beat me? ” said Philip, “ of course you 
beat me. Didn’t I stop and talk to the 
Dutch Baby for a couple of hours? Why 
wouldn’t you beat me? ” 

“ By the way,” said Marie, “ where is the 
Dutch Baby? ” 

“ Oh, he’ll be along,” said Philip. “ The 
Bluebird got tired of traveling by express.” 

A small voice spoke at their elbow. “ Haf 
you der tickets? ” it said. 

“ Oh, here you are,” said Philip. “ Dutch 
Baby, do you really like to ride on that 
thing?” 

The Dutch Baby looked greedily at the en- 
closure, where a circle of prancing animals 
pursued each other with dizzy speed, and the 
voice of Die Lustige Witwe was heard in the 
land. 


THE GLUEBIRD 181 

“ Sure,” he said, “ als besser as anything. 
A soldier I am, und in my hand a sword I 
hold — und strike, und strike, und strike.” 

His voice became a chant, and his eyes took 
on a far-away expression in which one could 
see a long line of warlike German ancestors. 

Philip turned to Marie, “ Don’t say that 
you like it, too,” he pleaded. 

“Like it?” she returned, “like it? — I 
love it ! ” And her eyes grew misty with 
memory, and Philip could see that he and the 
Dutch Baby were as if they were not. 

“ Marie,” he begged, “ please don’t go 
away, or, if you must, take me with you. I 
feel like an anachronism.” 

Marie smiled, a vague, half-listening sort 
of smile. “ I was very little,” she said, “ as 
little as Dutch Baby, and the nurse was red 
haired, and her name was Abina — Abina Mc- 
Carthy. She used to bring me here every 
day, and I would ride for hours while she 
talked to the Man in Charge. He never let 
me buy my tickets. I’ve often wondered if 
he isn’t responsible for the curvature of my 


1 82 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

brain. It all comes back to me now. I can 
almost hear the tune.” 

And she gave a reminiscent little sigh. 

“ Child Marie,” said Philip abruptly, 
“ some day will you show me a picture of 
little You?” 

The girl re-entered the present, with a 
jump. “Why?” 

“ Because it is a picture of little You,” said 
Philip. 

She looked away from him and her eye- 
lids fluttered. 

“ Will you? ” he persisted. 

“ A great many things can happen some 
day,” she said evasively. 

A small voice broke the somewhat tense 
pause. “ Over dere, choost where you are 
looking, iss where are der tickets,” it said 
politely. 

Philip still looked at the girl intently. 
“ No,” he said, “ you have made a mistake. 
There are no tickets where I was looking. 
One doesn’t go there by ticket at all.” 

The Dutch Baby looked puzzled. “ But 


THE GLUEBIRD 183 

in his hand he haf dem,” he insisted, “ und 
der Gluebird is wanting to ride.” 

Philip laughed. “The Bluebird, eh? 
Keep it up, young one,” he said. “ That 
same disinterested altruism has made many a 
saint’s reputation.” 

“ Ja ? ” said the Baby. “ Auf English you 
do not talk now.” 

Philip walked over to the Man in Charge. 
“ Four tickets, please,” he said. 

“ Four? ” said Marie. 

“ Sh! ” said Philip, “ you forget the Blue- 
bird.” 

He handed two to the Dutch Baby. 
“ There you are — for you and your impatient 
friend,” he said. 

The Baby took them solemnly, and offered 
one to the Man in Charge. “ On der same 
horse we sit,” he explained, “ und den two 
rides can we haf.” 

Marie laughed. “ Imagination has small 
chance against thrift, when the battle is on 
German territory,” she said. 

The Dutch Baby looked at her inquiringly. 


1 84 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ Auf English you do not speak, neider,” he 
said. “ Gretchen haf not words like dose.” 

The giddy steeds came to a standstill at 
that moment, and he walked over to them. 

“ Der black one I will ride,” said the Baby. 
“ Large he is, und strong, und two can he 
carry.” 

He climbed up and grasped the sword. 
“ Now you on der next,” he shouted to Marie. 
“ Und you behind,” he signified to Philip with 
a gesture of command. 

Marie sprang to the saddle and arranged 
her skirts. “ I’ve been dipped in the foun- 
tain of youth,” she cried gleefully. 

Philip turned pale. “ The results be on 
your head,” he said to Marie. “ I shall be 
dippy in the fountain of youth ! If I have to 
be borne to the hospital, promise you will 
come along.” 

“ You can write me poems like Henley,” 
said she. 

“ Out of the dark that covers me ! ” cried 
poor, pale Philip, as the machine began its 
slow revolution. 


THE GLUEBIRD 185 

The horses were now turning faster and 
faster in their never-ending, ever-vain pursuit. 

“ Take der swords, soldiers we are! ” they 
heard above the shriek of the calliopic organ 
box. “For der gold ring you could get 
anudder ride ! ” 

But Marie and Philip heeded not. Grasp- 
ing the uprights in front of them, they shut 
their eyes, and wished for death. The 
monsters whirled madly on. Would they 
never tire of their hideous revolutions ? On, 
on, endlessly on! The Merry Widow had 
been waltzed off the stage and back again, 
before the maddened animals had satiated 
their lust for speed. 

Philip dropped dizzily from his charger, 
and tottered toward Marie. She was leaning 
sick and faint against the side of the house. 

“ I thought you said you liked it,” he mur- 
mured weakly. 

“ Don’t be a beast,” she gasped. “ Help 
me to a bench.” 

The Dutch Baby from his height looked 
down at them scornfully. “ Soldiers do not 


1 86 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

so ! See me,” he said, brandishing the spike 
in his hand. 

“ All right,” said Philip. “ When the bat- 
tle is over you can come outside and gather 
up the corpses.” 

Marie sat down on a bench, and leaned 
her head in her hand. “ Can it be that I 
really did that for hours at a time?” she 
groaned. “ Oh, Boy, I must be dreadfully 
grown up ! ” 

“ I always was, as far as that pleasure is 
concerned,” he retorted. “ I never could 
stand it, so there’s no disillusion for me. 
Poor child, don’t feel so sad about it. There 
are still the swan boats, and donkeys, and 
peanuts.” 

“ In my present state, the thought of pea- 
nuts and boats is not exactly calculated to con- 
sole. Do you suppose he’ll insist on carrying 
out his entire program? ” 

The Dutch Baby came toward them hold- 
ing the Bluebird in his hand. The bird had a 
wild, dazed look in his eye and his feathers 
were ruffled. 


THE GLUEBIRD 


1S7 

“ He didn’t enjoy it either,” said Marie, 
breaking into a little laugh. “ It’s perfectly 
evident he was as disturbed as we were. I’m 
sure it’s upset his stuffing, too.” 

(“ Stuffing?” thought the Bluebird, 
“Stuffing? Can she mean me?”) 

“ Young man,” said Philip to the Baby, “ I 
see something in your eye. What is it? ” 

“ Ja,” said the Baby, “ it iss peanuts. Der 
Gluebird iss hungry.” 

Philip handed him ten cents. “ Go and 
gorge,” he said. 

“ Nein,” said the Baby. “ You should 
come also. To der donkeys we go now, und 
her und me are der squirrels, und you should 
feed us.” 

They purchased the peanuts and again 
walked eastward. Philip turned to Marie. 

“ Now,” he said, “ I understand why you 
are not afraid of mice — or say you’re not. 
You’re really related to them, and the Dutch 
Baby, with the unerring instinct of childhood, 
has discovered it. Of course you are a squir- 
rel.” 


1 88 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


Marie placed the tips of her fingers to her 
bosom, with an air of apologetic but expectant 
politeness, and looked at him with her head 
on one side. 

“ By jiminy,” he said, “ you do look like 
one, if only your nose weren’t so retrousse. 
Never-the-less, here is a peanut.” 

She took it and put it in her pocket. “ I’ll 
store it away against next winter’s cold,” she 
said. 

The Dutch Baby looked on disapprovingly. 
“ You are not a goot squirrel,” he said. 
“ You come too quick.” 

Philip shook his head. “ The second mis- 
take, Dutch Baby,” he said. “ She comes so 
slowly that sometimes it seems as though she 
were not moving at all.” 

The color flamed up in the girl’s face and 
she walked on swiftly. 

“ Hurry, Baby,” she said. “ It’s getting 
late, and perhaps the donkeys will have gone 
to bed.” 

But the Baby did not heed her. He had 
run on a few steps, and now crouched down 


THE GLUEBIRD 189 

in the middle of the walk in the attitude of 
expectant squirrelism. The Bluebird stood 
also in the center of the path. Philip held out 
a nut and whistled. The Dutch Baby sidled 
a few steps nearer, then turned and again 
ran away. The Bluebird remained in uncer- 
tain poise, his beak in the air, his eyes fixed 
on the tree-tops. 

(“How fortunate I never cared for pea- 
nuts,” he thought.) 

Philip whistled once more, and the Baby 
turned, ran back a little way, stopped, and 
again took the expectant attitude. “ Pie 
would and yet he would not,” sang Philip 
softly. 

But now with an access of courage he crept 
up to the outstretched hand, seized the nut, 
and scampered to a nearby tree, where he 
squatted down and nibbled till it was gone. 
Then he came walking back. 

“ Der rest to der Gluebird you should gif,” 
he said, and put the bag which Philip handed 
him in his pocket, “ See ! I wass a real squir- 
rel!” 


i 9 o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Philip turned to Marie. “ Please don’t 
copy him,” he said. 

They rounded a corner and came suddenly 
upon the donkeys. A small girl was astride 
of one, frightened yet happy, after the man- 
ner of her sex. Philip took off his hat, and 
made a low bow to Marie. There was a 
touch of irony in his tone. 

“ Princess, your steed awaits you,” he said, 
“ or is it a palfrey? ” 

“ Alas,” she answered, “ it is a donkey, just 
a plain — a very plain, donkey.” There was 
a tired little droop to the corners of her 
mouth and her elasticity was gone. “ It’s no 
use, Boy,” she continued, “ I should hate it, 
and feel like a fool into the bargain. I’m 
hopeless. I know I have ankles ! ” 

She ended with a laugh that was more a 
sigh. 

Philip regarded her quizzically. Perhaps 
he pitied, but he gave no sign. However, he 
made no motion to ride a donkey himself. 

Instead, he said, “ I think we’ll both sit 
here and watch the Baby and then set him 


THE GLUEBIRD 191 

face toward home and mother. I wonder if 
she knows where he is, by the way? ” 

The Dutch Baby was regarding the don- 
keys with a critical eye. He now laid his 
hand on the largest. “ Dis one I should 
ride,” he said. 

“ Come here, young man,” said Philip. 
“ Something has just occurred to me. Speak- 
ing colloquially, does your mother know 
you’re out? ” 

The Baby looked at them both, while a 
solemn twinkle grew in his eye. Then he 
spoke. 

“ Der Gluebird it wass what brang me,” he 
said. “ How should he tell when he cannot 
to speak, und, besides, mein mutter haf he 
not seen.” 

Marie gave a horrified exclamation. “ I 
never thought about his mother,” she cried. 
“He seemed so adequate. Poor woman! 
She’s probably dragging the river.” 

Philip took him by the hand with determi- 
nation, and started northward. 

“ We’ll go donkey-riding another day,” he 


192 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

said, “ or rather you can. Put this in your 
wallet.” 

The Baby took the coin and tucked it care- 
fully in his trouser pocket. 

“ All right,” he said cheerfully. “ Anud- 
der day will I be der cholly miller on der 
donkey.” 

“ Here’s the gate,” said Philip. “ Shake 
hands, will you? ” 

The Baby gravely offered a much used 
palm. 

“ Good-bye, Dutch Baby,” said Marie, 
“ and please was it nice to have us to play 
with?” 

The Baby looked from one to the other, 
then shook his head. 

“ I wass der driver und der soldier und der 
squirrel,” he said. “ You wass only playing.” 

And he and the Bluebird crossed the Ave- 
nue, and started down Seventy-second Street. 

Marie and Philip stood in the Children’s 
Gate, and watched him diminish. Before he 
turned into a speck he looked back, and waved 
his hand, which held something tightly. 


THE GLUEBIRD 193 

“ The ‘ Gluebird ’ is saying farewell,” said 
Philip. 

Marie turned, with a gesture of disgust. 
“ I know what is the matter with us,” she 
said, “ we’re stuffed ! We can’t play, or 
imagine, or make believe, any more than that 
bird can fly, or sing, or dig worms. We're 
stuffed. It’s tragic, but it’s true. And the 
Dutch Baby knew it, too. He said, ‘ I wass 
der driver, und der soldier, und der squirrel. 
You wass only playing.’ Fancy his saying 
that! ” She laughed, but there was a catch 
in her voice. “ So we’re symbolized by a 
stuffed bluebird! The sky is our glass case. 
Good-night, I must go.” 

She put out her hand. Philip took it, and 
held it. 

“ Why do you make such a tragedy out of 
being grown up? ” he asked. 

“ Isn’t it a tragedy? ” 

He shook his head. “ That depends, that 
all depends,” he said. 

“Depends on what?” she asked, gently 
pulling on her hand. 


194 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ On you,” he answered. 

“ Please,” said Marie, “ that is my hand 
you have. I find I need it myself.” 

She smiled, but a kind of ominous dignity 
had crept into her tone. 

Philip released the hand. “ I’d like to 
shake you, and not by the hand,” he said, with 
a half smile. 

“ Why? ” she inquired with some surprise. 

“ For that tone, which always terrorizes a 
man, if you must know,” he replied. “ And 
the worst of it is, the man is never sure 
whether he ought to be terrorized.” 

If he had expected the obvious retort, he 
was, in his turn, surprised. Marie did not 
fight back. Instead, a look of fear came over 
her face, and she spoke with simple frankness. 

“ We are grown up, there’s no getting 
round it,” she said, “and just for that reason 
you musn’t see me any more. I cannot be 
grown up with you.” 

“ Will you tell me why? ” he asked. 

She shook her head. “ No,” she said, 
“except that you won’t leave the bugle alone.” 


THE GLUEBIRD 


i95 

“ And you won’t come here to the Run- 
away Place any more? ” 

Again she shook her head, “ I’ve got to go 
to work again next week, anyway,” she said 
evasively. 

“ But you won’t, you can’t, say good-bye 
like this. You’ll at least come to-morrow, or 
next day? ” 

“ I — I can’t to-morrow,” she replied, weak- 
ening under his gaze. 

“ Then Sunday? ” 

“ I— I oughtn’t.” 

“ Thank you ! ” said he. “ Now tell me 
this, aren’t you the least little bit glad you’re 
not ten? ” 

The girl glanced up the Avenue. 

“ The ’bus is coming,” she said, and started 
to move away. 

He caught her by the wrist and looked at 
her hard in the eyes. “ Answer me,” he said, 
imperiously. 

“ Not when you ask me like that,” she 
retorted. 

“ Answer me,” he pleaded. 


196 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ Well, what if I am — sometimes? It isn’t 
very often.” 

“Is it when you are in the Run-away 
Place?” 

She kept her head averted. 

“ Please look at me,” he said. 

“ There’s another ’bus coming,” she an- 
swered. 

“ You are only ten,” said he, and dropped 
her wrist. “ It’s just play — that’s all it 
means to you. Good-bye.” 

“Oh! Oh! ” She fluttered between 

him and the oncoming stage. Her eyes filled 
with tears, but he did not see, for he kept his 
face averted. She opened her mouth as if to 
say more, but just then he made as if to turn, 
and suddenly mindful of the tell-tale moisture, 
she fled to the corner, and sprang upon the 
step of the ’bus. It started on quickly. She 
looked back to wave her hand; that at least 
she could trust herself to do. But he was 
looking another way. 

“ But there is Sunday,” she thought, biting 
her lip to fight back the tears. It might have 


THE GLUEBIRD 197 

comforted her to know that he was thinking 
the same thought. 

And on the morrow the Bluebird stood 
again behind the glass doors of the cabinet, 
and looked out over the room to the green, 
waving branches beyond the window. But in 
his soul the longing was stilled. 

“ Times are not what they were,” he 
sighed. “ Can it be that I am growing old? ” 


CHAPTER VII 


OF POLLPARROTS, PORCELAINS AND 
THE HAND OF GOD 

~ Philip finished the last paragraph, and 



xjL laid down his book, there arose a shout- 
ing of small boys from the street below, and 
he went out on his balcony to investigate. At 
least seventy-five urchins were busily engaged 
in pelting something in an elm tree, and others 
were arriving every moment. Twice as many 
more men and women were watching the fun. 
Looking up into the tree, Philip saw, almost 
on a level with his sixth story windows, a 
parrot sitting on a limb, looking strangely out 
of place, with his gay green coat and red trim- 
mings, in this dusty, ragged elm. He was 
paying no attention to the innumerable spar- 
rows who hopped about on the surrounding 
twigs and surveyed the intruder with twitters 
of astonishment. He was paying less atten- 


THE HAND OF GOD 199 

tion to the rain of stones around him, which, 
in point of fact, endangered those below far 
more than him. Philip heard somebody on 
the street inquire politely if he wanted a 
cracker, but he made no reply, only taking a 
firmer hold of the twig with his aged-looking 
claws, and shivering in the cold air, for the 
day was chill for May. 

Poor bird, born to a warmer clime and the 
seclusion of the tropic jungle, his liberty had 
come too late! In the dusty elm over Wash- 
ington Square he was a more pathetic captive 
than in his cage. He swayed on his twig 
more and more stolidly as daylight faded. 
The problem of how to get supper and how to 
get warm was too much for him. A police- 
man scattered the boys, who had finally suc- 
ceeded in hitting a tramp on a park bench in 
the head. A few pedestrians lingered, look- 
ing up. Then they, too, passed on. The 
sunset pink died over the heights of Hoboken, 
and the lamps of the city flared out. But 
opposite his balcony, a black speck in the trac- 
ery of twigs, Philip could still see the poor 


aoo THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


parrot clinging to his perch. Then the twi- 
light passed into night, and he was visible no 
more. 

But Philip continued to think of him, 
mourned somewhere in this big town no doubt 
by a little child, a pampered pet for whom 
liberty meant death and captivity salvation, a 
lost, green wing-feather in a drab world, a 
very paradox of a parrot. And he forgot 
to reflect on the book he had been reading, 
and read nothing else, for puzzling over the 
riddle. 

The next day he sought Child Marie, for 
it was the promised Sunday. 

“ O, Portia, interpret,” he said, when he 
had duly narrated the episode. Of their last 
parting he made no mention. And she said, 
“ Was his green a very gay green, and did he 
look very tropicy? ” 

And when Philip nodded, she went on, 
“ He meant Pan in Wall Street, a dreamer in 
a dry goods house. He meant there are some 
folks who are so constituted that, in a world 
constituted like this, they can’t look after 


THE HAND OF GOD 201 

themselves. You’ve lost a button off your 
coat.” 

“ But why was he ever allowed out of 
Brazil? That’s the brutal part of it all,” 
said Philip, pulling at the thread where the 
button had been. “ I’ve got the button some 
place.” 

“ Parrot in the leafless tree ...” she be- 
gan. Then she hesitated. “ That last line 
would have to go, ‘ I should know what God 
and man be,’ ” she continued. “ That won’t 
do, though it’s quite as good as Tennyson’s 
rhythm. But why would you strive to pluck 
the heart out of the mystery? It’s so futile! 
You can’t do it. Even Charlie had some 
doubts why his aunt was allowed out of 
Brazil, and wiser men than you have failed to 
solve the mystery of the parrot.” 

“ So life is epitomized by a parrot! ” said 
he. “ The other day it was a bluebird.” 

“ Precisely,” said she. “ But we shall be 
sentimentalizing like Sterne over the starling, 
if we are not careful. Let’s go for a walk 
through the museum.” 


202 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Child Philip demurred, pouting. “ I hate 
museums,” he said, “ musty old places full 
of paintings that all ‘ tell a story,’ and fool 
pottery. Let’s not go for a walk through the 
museum.” 

“ You forget,” said Child Marie, gently, 
“ that this museum is in the Run-away Place, 
so it must be nice, not like other museums. 
Besides, it’s Sunday afternoon, and the people 
will be more fun than the pictures. They 
always are on Sundays.” 

Philip grew chirpy. “ So it is in the Run- 
away Place,” he said, “ so it is Sunday, and 
there’ll be lots of people. I’d forgotten about 
its being Sunday. Sunday does have its uses. 
Why aren’t you in church ? ” 

“ I am,” said Child Marie, with a wry 
smile. 

He looked at her soberly. “ I suspect I 
am very wicked,” he said. 

“ I suspect you are,” she answered. 

“ But— but ” 

“ Yes? ” she queried. 

“ Why do you let me be? ” 


THE HAND OF GOD 203 

The girl looked at him oddly, almost as if 
she were afraid. 

“I — I don’t know!” she said; and she 
moved hastily down the path from Mount 
Mozart. 

As Philip moved by her side, he was aware 
of a curious sense of being more alive than 
usual, perhaps because she was such an alive 
little being herself. 

“ I don’t so much want to play as to feel, 
this afternoon,” he said. 

“ Feel what? ” she asked. 

“ I don’t know; anything, everything. I’m 
kind of a spiritual octopus to-day, with feelers 
out in all directions for impressions. All the 
world is clamoring for me to pay attention to 
it!” 

Marie turned her head away. “ I know,” 
she said. “ Perhaps that’s why I went to 
church this afternoon! ” 

Philip paused at the turnstile of the mu- 
seum, while a blue baby waddled under the 
stile without grazing its bonnet, and scam- 
pered to feel the toes of a marble lady who 


204 the run-away place 

seemed somewhat unduly conscious of her 
lack of costume. 

“ I’m sure something wonderful is going 
to happen,” he said, “ my feelers are tin- 
gling.’’ 

Marie smiled, “ This place is full of won- 
ders,” she said, “ even if you don’t like it.” 

“ Oh, I like it well enough,” he answered, 
“ when I get by these awful native statues. 
I love the Egyptian people, who are always 
smiling. They sit in their cases and grin, not 
at you, but at something far off over your left 
shoulder. They all look terribly wise, like 
the Mona Lisa.” 

Presently he tore Child Marie from rapt 
contemplation of the little marble portrait of 
Queen Tii, which gazes down the main stair- 
case on the Rodin at the base. 

“ I must think who it is she looks like,” 
cried Marie. “ It will haunt me till I re- 
member.” 

“ I should think it would,” said Philip. 
“ I prefer the Rodin.” 

They went down the stairs, past the crowds 


THE HAND OF GOD 205 

swarming through the Fifth Avenue entrance, 
and stood before that nude bronze figure, at 
once the triumph of modern realism and 
imaginative suggestion, one of the most vital 
bronzes, surely, in the country. To Philip, 
at least, there was a haunting beauty in its 
touch of the earth, its unglorified nudity, and 
for him its indefinable sense of life was so 
potent that almost, in a twitch of sunlight on 
the back, he could fancy a muscle quivered. 

The incoming crowds jostled him; he heard 
faintly the chattering comments of those who 
paused to look, also. But chiefly he saw a 
brown field at twilight, and water, and a rude 
hut, and a slain body, and a nude figure, 
poised with the grace of an animal, looking 
dumbly toward the sky. 

Marie’s voice brought him back. 

u Is it so wonderful? ” she asked. 

“ It is just what one of my feelers was cry- 
ing for,” he smiled. 

“ It took you far away,” said she. 

Philip drew close to her quickly. “ It is 
a horrid statue, I hate it! ” he said. 


20 6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


She looked at him hastily, and colored. 
“ In the Run-away Place,” she said, “ we — 
we — ought to keep together.” 

They followed the crowd aimlessly for a 
time. The blue baby they met frequently. 
Usually it was insisting on being held up to 
inspect at close range the effigies of old 
knights and ladies lying peacefully on their 
tombs. But it cried also, to play with the 
toes of Moses and manifested great interest in 
the tombs of the Medicis. 

“ It has excellent taste,” said Child Marie. 

Presently they found themselves in front of 
Cabanel’s canvas, u The Birth of Venus,” 
which Philip said belonged to the candy box 
cover school of art. 

Suddenly Marie gave a cry of triumph. 
“ It’s a maid we used to have! ” she said. 

“Well, well! ” said Child Philip, looking 
more intently at Venus, “ I’m sorry I wasn’t 
then a visitor at your house ! ” 

Child Marie blushed rosily. “ I mean 
Queen Tii, of course ! ” she exclaimed, with a 
rather feeble attempt at stiffness. 


THE HAND OF GOD 207 

“ Oh, pardon me,” said Philip, most 
meekly. “ I misunderstood.” 

“ For that,” said she, “ you shall be made 
to look at every picture that ‘ tells a story.’ ” 

Philip glanced around the room. “ Of 
course, they are the ones everybody is looking 
at,” he said. “ Let’s listen to the comments 
of these seekers after light.” 

The galleries by now were crowded with a 
great throng of people, of all ages and races, 
the Sunday afternoon throng at the Metro- 
politan Museum, which averages 6,500 per- 
sons a Sunday. There were various ragged 
little boys, scarce railing high, who crowded 
before the battle scenes of Detaille and the 
other Frenchmen, and had no eyes for any- 
thing else. There were young lovers from 
the East Side, who wandered frankly arm in 
arm, even hand in hand, from masterpiece to 
masterpiece, and looked at each other. 

“ This is art for Cupid’s sake,” said Child 
Marie, watching two of them pass. 

A retort was on Philip’s lips, but he did not 
make it. He pondered it, however, for a 


208 the RUN-AWAY place 

time in silence, and forgot to watch the crowds 
in watching Child Marie. She darted eagerly 
where the press was thickest about a picture, 
edged her way to the shoulder of some woman 
who was making comments to a companion, 
and presently would dart back again to 
Philip, her face beaming, and repeat what she 
had heard. 

They stood some time in front of Schenck’s 
big picture of sheep huddled in a blizzard, 
and Marie was all ears. She had already ex- 
pressed one art criticism herself, with an air 
of finality. “ Why do people paint sheep? ” 
she had asked. Rather liking sheep himself, 
and particularly admiring the skill with which 
Schenck has rendered the cold, blown snow in 
the wool of their windward flanks, he had 
wisely said nothing. Two women came up 
beside them. 

“You see that cross off in the distance?” 
said one, “ well, I’ve a friend who says that 
detracts from the picture. I’m sure I don’t 
see why. But, anyhow, I think an artist 
ought to have the right to put anything into 


THE HAND OF GOD 209 

his picture he wants to. It’s his picture, ain’t 
it?” 

“ Certainly it is,” said the other woman. 
“ I gave them sheep to a friend of mine for a 
wedding present and they was much appre- 
ciated.” 

“ Is that an argument against matri- 
mony? ” whispered Philip. 

“ No, against friends,” answered Marie, 
as they moved on. 

Close by hangs “ The Last Token.” That 
picture, also, is much admired by the Sunday 
afternoon throngs. An early Christian maid- 
en stands in the arena, looking up with a 
pleased expression, to see who has thrown the 
rose that lies at her feet. Meanwhile tigers 
are creeping near to devour her, at least sup- 
posedly for that purpose. They do not seem 
very enthusiastic. 

“ Maybe they are Fletcherizing, and aren’t 
really hungry yet,” suggested Philip. 

But his flippancy was rebuked by a little 
East-side Fluffy Ruffles, who just then came 
aggressively up to the rail, with a girl com- 


2io THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

panion. “ Ain’t that a sweet one, Mamie ! ” 
she cried enthusiastically, shifting her gum. 
“ Her sweetheart’s throwed her a rose, and 
the tigers are goin’ to eat her. My, I think 
it’s touchin’ ! ” 

“ Now you see why the story pictures are 
here, don’t you, Boy?” asked Child Marie, 
with a serious note in her voice. 

“ I won’t, I won’t, I won’t ! ” he exclaimed, 
“ I won’t admit it. It’s a compromise. I 
hate compromises.” 

“ Then come and find the Rogers’ groups,” 
said Child Marie. 

“ Rogers’ groups ! Have they Rogers’ 
groups here?” he exclaimed. “I adore 
Rogers’ groups. America has produced three 
really great sculptors, Saint Gaudens, Barnard 
and Rogers.” 

“ And you regard them, in the order 
named, with faith, hope and charity? ” smiled 
Marie. 

“ Ingenious, but unconvincing,” said he. 
“ Rogers was a great man. Nobody could 
have one of his groups around the home with- 


THE HAND OF GOD ai 


out learning what art isn’t — which is the first 
step in learning what it is.” 

Before the Rogers’ statuette of Ichabod 
Crane and the Headless Horseman they found 
two men and a woman standing, the men in 
immaculate frock coat, the woman with or- 
chids at her bosom. The three spoke Eng- 
lish, but with the trace of a foreign accent. 

“ How quaint!” said one of the men. 
“ What does it represent? ” 

The woman bowed over the inscription, her 
gold pince-nez at her eyes. “ I believe it is 
some American legend,” she said. “ It hap- 
pened up the Hudson, near the town where 
Rockefeller lives, Tarrytown, is it? Maurice 
spoke of it one day when he came home from 
school.” 

“ Fancy their having legends ! ” said the 
man. 

“And this in New York!” whispered 
Marie. “ They live here.” 

“ They help elect our Mayor and Gover- 
nor, no doubt,” said Philip. “ But I can’t get 
excited over that, with these Rogers’ groups 


2i2 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


so wrongly mounted. It breaks my heart to 
see them treated so ! ” 

“How?” asked Child Marie. 

“ Why just set on pedestals, like any ordi- 
nary statuary ! They ought to stand on little 
marble-top tables, made out of black walnut, 
with the head of Minerva carved on the ends, 
and carved urns between the feet. A silk 
scarf ought to be flung with studied careless- 
ness around the base of each statue, and the 
whole, if possible, stood in the bay window, 
where the neighbors can see it.” 

“Did you come from Brooklyn, Boy?” 
she asked. 

“Oh, not that!” said he. “But I did 
come from Massachusetts.” 

They moved on with the throng, and pres- 
ently found themselves in a group in contem- 
plation of a picture by Hovenden called “ Je- 
rusalem the Golden.” A sick lady sits in a 
chair, and a man sits sadly beside her, while 
off in the corner somebody is seen playing 
the piano. Nearly all the spectators were de- 
bating whether or not the lady had consump- 


THE HAND OF GOD 213 

tion. Some said she had, some said her face 
showed too much color. But all were in- 
tensely interested. 

“ Courage, Camille ! ” said Philip, address- 
ing the lady in the picture. 

A sweet young thing who hung upon her 
escort’s arm frowned at him angrily. “ It’s 
always nice to have your friends play sad 
tunes when you’re dying, ain’t it? ” said she, 
to her escort, in a tone meant for Philip to 
hear. 

But the escort was on Philip’s side. “ I’d 
rather have ‘ Harrigan ’ than a hymn tune,” 
he said. 

“ And this is art ! ” said Philip, as they 
moved away from the still admiring group. 
“ Poor George Fuller ! See here, one of his 
misty, soft portraits, with the tone of an old 
master about it and that note of struggling, 
half inarticulate poetry he never failed to sug- 
gest — and not a soul bestowing on it so much 
as a passing glance ! ” 

“ But we see it,” whispered Child Marie. 

“ I want them to see it ! ” he cried out, with 


214 the run-away place 

sudden earnestness. “ The beauty is here, 
and they won’t look, they don’t know! It 
stirs me, it cries to me — and yet they hear 
nothing. I don’t want to feel apart from 
them like this, as if I were better than they 
are. I want to share it with them.” 

“ Boy,” said she, “ you want the impos- 
sible.” 

“ Isn’t that always most worth wanting? ” 
he asked, looking earnestly at her. 

Again the shrinking, half frightened look 
came into her eyes, and she turned away. 

“Yes! ” she breathed, almost fiercely. 

In the next gallery she sank down on a 
bench to rest, and he beside her. They were 
facing the famous picture of Paul and Vir- 
ginia running through the storm. A woman 
with two small boys came up, and began to 
expound the painting to her offspring. 

“ He doesn’t mind the storm, so long as he 
has her,” explained the mother. “ You see 
how she is looking off at something, fright- 
ened. But he is just looking at her. The 
expression is wonderful. I remember the first 


THE HAND OF GOD 215 

time I ever saw that picture; it was years ago. 
Your father and I saw it together. It is one 
of the greatest paintings in the museum.” 

She continued to regard the canvas, almost 
forgetful of her boys, who looked at it with 
brief interest, and then turned away to a near- 
by battle scene. 

Philip turned to his companion. “ One 
of the greatest paintings in the museum ! ” he 
whispered. “ What are Manets and Sar- 
gents and Turners and Millets to her? 
‘ Paul and Virginia ’ gave her her romance.” 

“The little story is all there, isn’t it?” 
whispered back Marie. 

He drew a little closer. “ Fancy making 
love at the inspiration of that picture ! ” said 
he. 

“ It does seem incredible, doesn’t it,” she 
replied, looking at the picture. 

“ Does it?” said he, bending toward her, 
“I wonder!” 

She looked at him, startled, and rose hastily. 
“ Don’t — you — there’s another Rodin we 
haven’t seen,” she said. 


21 6 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

There was a tense silence between them as 
they moved out of the gallery. Marie kept 
a little ahead, as if she were fleeing from him. 
He could not see whether she was angry or 
not. 

They found the Rodin by the crowd about 
it. It stood, a lump of white marble, within 
a railing in the centre of one of the picture 
galleries. Over the railing hung a circle of 
curious faces, and Marie pressed in among 
them. He followed, and they stood side by 
side looking down at the lump of white rock 
called “ The Hand of God,” ringed by the 
peering, puzzled faces. 

Out of the rough marble is thrust up a 
huge, strong hand, and this hand, in turn, is 
grasping a smaller mass of the rough stone 
in its palm. Out of that smaller mass two 
nude figures, a male and a female, are emerg- 
ing. These figures are not clasped in em- 
brace; rather are they coming to a twin birth. 
Their bodies are doubled, the one around the 
other, in the birth posture. Their eyes are 
closed. Yet they are of adult stature — 


THE HAND OF GOD 217 

Adam and Eve, perhaps, the eternal male, 
the eternal female, twin born. 

The marble plainly puzzled the crowd. 
“ It ain’t finished is it? Probably the sculp- 
tor began it and then died,” shrilled a 
woman’s voice. 

“But God’s got six fingers!” someone 
else exclaimed, viewing the composition from 
a rear angle that showed only Adam’s foot. 

“ It’s a hand holding a baby,” a father was 
explaining to his children, as they passed with 
a casual glance. 

But Marie and Philip moved slowly around 
the rail, paying scant attention to the com- 
ments over their shoulders. This lump of 
half carved marble, set in its circle of peering 
human faces, was speaking to them new and 
subtle things. 

“ He holds us in the hollow of His hand,” 
whispered Marie. 

“ There is something strangely poignant,” 
Philip answered, “ in the way the man’s head 
rests against the woman’s bosom. His eyes 
are not yet opened, yet he knows where to 


21 8 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


lay his head. ( Das Ewig-weibliche zieht uns 
hinan! ’ It was ordained from the begin- 
ning. It is the law back of the universe, back 
in the cosmic lump God held in his hand! ” 
Marie’s hands grasped the rail tightly. 
She made no answer. But presently she said, 
“ How white and soft the marble is where 
Rodin has brought his flesh to a finish ! ” 

“ He is the greatest living master of tex- 
ture,” Philip answered. 

He tried to speak calmly, but he could not. 
He was battling with an impulse to lay his 
hand down hard on the rail over hers, to 
embody all critical comment in a long, hungry 
look into her eyes. Her body suddenly 
thrilled him, her close presence at his side 
was beyond words sweet. Perhaps, by some 
intuition, she knew this, for she turned ab- 
ruptly to depart, and they were suddenly con- 
scious of the press of people about them, 
ringing the marble lump. 

Instinctively they hastened through the 
galleries, tingling with their own sensations, 
avoiding the anticlimax of mere paint, or of 


THE HAND OF GOD 219 

senseless comment from the crowd. Alive 
when he entered the museum, Philip was now 
in that condition of emotional sensitiveness 
when the soul waits on tip-toe for a miracle. 

“ What is going to happen? ” he whispered 
excitedly into Marie’s ear, though there was 
no need for whispers. 

Her own eyes were large with a kind of 
wonder and joy and fear. 

“ I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, 
half breathlessly. 

Their way led them into the great gold 
room where the Oriental porcelains are; and 
suddenly they knew that the adventure was 
upon them. Those thousand vases of perfect 
shape and exquisite color stood around them 
under transparent glass, and breathed a visible 
silence on their lips. Pure as flames, pure 
as thin flames burning in still air around an 
altar, they were. And yet they were not at 
all like that. That blue was the yearning 
blue of the dawn sky, when a quiet robin 
twitters in the grass; that pink the virgin 
pink of the eastern sea rim when the day is 


220 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

dying. As the shell holds the music of the 
deep, these perfect shapes of color infinitely 
tender, infinitely alluring, sad with their own 
perfection, held the light of dawn and even- 
ing in their enamelled depths. 

“Look!” she whispered, touching his 
hand, “ the light does not come in from above. 
It is shed like a radiance out the vases them- 
selves! ” 

And it was even so. A soft glow perme- 
ated the lofty room and passed upward, re- 
flected from the gold walls, out through the 
ground glass skylights overhead. An over- 
powering sensation came upon Philip that 
they were standing on a hilltop in a land 
of flowers. Behind them the hills piled up, 
blue on bluer fold, and before them a valley 
of roses and trees in soft bloom and pool- 
beaded streams fell away to the far plain 
of the sea. Somewhere a robin sang, a single 
robin softly, and in all the world there were 
only she and he, old as the curve of the 
sea rim, young as the morning cloud. 

“ Boy,” he heard her whisper, “ we have 


THE HAND OF GOD 221 

been here before, you and I, I don’t know 
when. The cherry blossoms hung just so.” 

Had she really spoken? He turned to 
see. The light of wonder was in her eyes. 
And in her mind had been the same picture, 
and in her heart — in her heart had there been 
the same aching gladness? He must know! 

“ Was it sweet to be there, just you and 
I ? ” he whispered. 

She looked at him a long, struggling mo- 
ment. There was joy and there was terror 
and there were tears in her eyes. But before 
she answered there came a kind of smile, 
fighting up, and what she said was, “ I think 
there was a parrot in a tree there.” 

His soul came down from its tip-toe ab- 
ruptly. So she would not answer ! She had 
not been moved enough for that. 

“ So Brazil was wrong,” said he, himself 
with a wry, disappointed smile; “it should 
have been Japan. I didn’t know they had 
parrots in Japan. But the mystery remains, 
why was he ever allowed out of Japan? ” 

“ Yes,” she said, in a low voice, almost 


222 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

like a sob, turning away, “ the mystery re- 
mains ! ” 

“ Marie, Child, what is it? ” he asked with 
quick tenderness. 

She smiled up at him. “ It is nothing, 
truly,” she said. 

They went with the black swarm of people 
down the great steps to the Avenue, for the 
closing gong had sounded, and walked south- 
ward along the Park walk, the Run-away 
Place on one side, lying green into the low 
afternoon sun, on the other the mansions of 
the rich. They loitered on, almost in silence, 
till the Park was behind them, and the sun 
had set. She had never allowed him to ac- 
company her out of the Run-away Place be- 
fore. As the city swallowed them, a new 
sense of protection came over him, an added 
tingle of reality in her presence by his side. 

And as he walked in silence in the fast 
gathering twilight, he wondered by what 
mysterious threads of destiny their lives had 
been drawn together. The carriages rolled 
endlessly by on the Avenue, the stream of 


THE HAND OF GOD 223 

pedestrians brushed them on the walk, the 
great city, opening its myriad eyes to the 
dusk, lay all about, teeming, Titanic, alive. 
Yet out of this myriad spawn of the primeval 
monad they two had come together, and 
were now walking side by side, in inti- 
mate, sweet silence, they two apart from all 
the rest. Was it any less wonderful than 
the mood in the museum? Was it not more 
wonderful, for it was tingling with reality, 
it would last? Over the crowds and car- 
riages, over the city, he seemed to see spun 
a great filmy net, like the ghost of a Cyclo- 
pean spider’s web, and all the spokes con- 
verged in upon them. They were fast in 
the centre, and the threads went out to the 
ends of space. He rubbed his eyes, and she 
smiled up at him questioningly. 

“ It is nothing,” said he, “ it is every- 
thing.” 

“ You must either get eyeglasses or more 
sleep,” she replied, with a most practical air. 

Presently she stopped and pointed west- 
ward down Thirtieth Street. 


224 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Against the last red banner of the defeated 
day, a church spire many blocks distant stood 
up alone and lovely. In our modern Baby- 
lon of sky-scrapers, it is almost impossible to 
glimpse any longer a spire against the sky. 
Commerce out-tops religion, and the tallest 
temple is made a pigmy by its next door 
neighbor, the thirty story office building. 
The most aspiring architectural form that 
man has devised is, in New York, unable to 
tell of its aspiration. But here, looking 
through the heart of the Tenderloin, down 
the vista of a thrice notorious street, the 
sudden, unexpected note was struck, the beau- 
tiful spire, clear-cut and slender, yearned up 
above the sordid roofs into the west. 

“ Your own Back Bay across the Charles 
could show nothing more lovely than that,” 
she said; “nothing so lovely, in fact, for it 
would lack the charm of the unexpected, the 
heightening of contrast. You need a Singer 
tower, to appreciate the State House dome.” 

“ If I were in college I should write a 
grandiloquent daily theme about it,” said 


THE HAND OF GOD 225 

Philip, “ making it the symbol of the soul’s 
aspiration.” 

“ Why don’t you anyway? ” she asked. 

“ Because I have looked to-day in 'the 
Hand of God,” he answered, “ and seen there 
only a man and a woman.” 

He spoke with tense earnestness. Again 
the frightened look came into Marie’s eyes, 
and a look of struggle, too. 

“ Boy,” she said, “ you are not a boy, you 
can’t be a boy. Oh, you won’t be a boy! 
You won’t leave the bugle alone ! You must 
leave me now, and you must promise once 
more not to follow.” 

“ As you wish,” he answered, “ but not till 
I know when I am to see you again.” 

There was a battle fighting behind the 
girl’s eyes. 

“ I don’t know,” she finally said. “ My 
little vacation is over. It can’t be week days, 
and it can’t be Sundays any more. I — I 
can’t lie again as I have to-day.” 

“ It must be some time, and soon ! ” said 


he. 


226 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

She shook her head. “ I’m afraid not,” 
she answered. 

“ But why, why? ” 

“ Because you aren’t a boy any longer! ” 

“ Yes, all the more because I’m not a boy 
any longer, all the more, do you hear? ” 

“No, no, no!” she pleaded. “If you 
care, you won’t ! ” 

“ Yes, I say,” he cried, and tried in his 
eagerness to take her hands. 

She drew herself up, repelling him. 

“ Don’t !” she said. “Don’t! I can’t see 
you any more — not now, not for a long time, 
perhaps. I am going now; you have prom- 
ised not to follow. Some Saturday afternoon 
I may be on Mount Mozart, I can’t promise 
more than that. I shouldn’t promise that! 
Oh, I don’t promise that ! ” 

The tears suddenly rushed into her eyes. 
She turned abruptly from him, and almost 
ran down the street. 

He made no effort to follow, standing 
blankly, gazing at her retreating figure. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 

'JpHE June heat had come on, the horrid 
June heat, and Philip Stoughton worked 
at his novel with a syphon of soda on the 
desk and his clothes on a chair. Up in 
the New England hills his family still, no 
doubt, wore wraps of an evening when they 
went out on the pasture knoll to watch the 
sun set behind distant Graylock; and some- 
times his vision carried him up there, and 
he felt the cool, sweet air on his brow. The 
rattle of traffic down under his window, the 
ceaseless roar of the great city, the din and 
dust and heat, smote on his nerves like stabs. 
He loathed the grim, ugly town. The 
country called to his heat-worn nerves with 
a thousand siren voices. But somewhere else 
in this heat and horror lived Child Marie, 
and he knew now that he could not leave her, 

227 


228 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 


he knew with the certainty that all his hungry, 
lonely days since she left him that Sunday 
afternoon had given him. If he only knew 
half as well where she lived, how quickly 
would he smash all his promises to bits, he 
thought, and rush to find her. 

Every Saturday noon had seen him in the 
summer-house on Mount Mozart, and every 
Saturday sunset lighted his dejected steps 
down the path and out of the Run-away Place, 
that now was almost hateful to him, with its 
load of memories: yet day after hot day he 
had wandered in it, in the chance hope of 
meeting her; day after hot day he had paced 
the residence streets of the town, watching 
for the sight of her in some window, in some 
door. He had haunted school houses. At 
times her image so obsessed him that he fan- 
cied he saw her in a crowd, and he would dash 
eagerly after, only to meet inevitable dis- 
appointment. He thought always how tired 
she must be, how worn. The memory of 
her farewell, of her frightened face, of her 
rush of tears, he could not lose. It haunted 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 229 

him. Sometimes the blind pity of it would 
sweep over him and send him out searching 
at all hours. His hunger for her grew daily, 
fed on the loneliness, mounted to a passion 
that could not be denied. 

This insufferably hot June night he threw 
down his pen at eight o’clock, and gave up 
all thought of work for the evening. There 
was a moon rising red over the steam of the 
city. He wanted her, he wanted her beyond 
all things else. He thought with a grim 
smile of the philosopher’s statement that it 
is impossible to feel affection with the glass 
below zero or above eighty. He wanted her 
so badly that he felt his yearning must compel 
her, too, so that if he went out into the town 
their footsteps would draw together. 

And, let the Society for Psychic Research 
make what of it they can, some unreasoned 
impulse led him across Washington Square, 
and there, on the corner of Macdougal Street, 
he met her, tired and worn and pale, coming 
up from the stewing, malodorous slums to 
the south. 


2 3 o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

She grew paler still when she saw him; 
then the color flooded into her face and her 
gasp of recognition was almost like a sob 
of joy, a sob she would have suppressed, but 
could not. He barred her passage, and as she 
perforce stopped right before him he looked 
down into her face and said, “ I knew I 
should meet you.” 

“ How did you know? ” she asked, a little 
troubled. “ Have you broken your promise, 
Boy?” 

“ No,” said he. “ But I wanted to meet 
you so badly that I just knew I should! ” 

“Ah, do you, too, believe that?” she ex- 
claimed. 

“ I wonder — — ” he began. 

“ Yes?” 

“ I wonder if you helped? ” 

“ You must let me go home now,” she said, 
endeavoring to pass him. 

He slipped quietly along by her side. 

“ No,” he said, “ I mustn’t do anything of 
the sort. Let you go now? Not much! 
You see that beautiful, green gasolene ’bus? 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 231 

Like the ‘ old three decker, 1 that’s taking 
tired people to — the Run-away Place. The 
fare is ten cents, which isn’t exorbitant, when 
you consider the destination.” 

“ No, no,” she remonstrated. “ I must go 
home ! ” 

“ Yes, yes,” said he. “ You must do noth- 
ing of the kind! ” 

And he led her across the street, and up 
the little winding stairs to the roof of the 
’bus. She went half in protest, half with a 
kind of exultant freedom. But she had to 
go. This night he was not to be resisted. 
When they alighted, 'Victory was leading 
General Sherman down the Avenue, like 
a golden ghost frozen on a pedestal, and the 
Park was soaked in moonlight. 

“ I have never been in the Park at night 
before,” said Child Marie. “ If I’m afraid 
may I take your hand? ” 

“ I hope it’s very, very spooky! ” answered 
Child Philip. 

And away they fled, down a path toward 
Lake Swan Boat, under the moon. 


2 3 2 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

Have you, Gentle Reader, ever gone to 
the Run-away Place under the moon on a 
summer night? Probably you have not. 
Probably you are always the least bit scorn- 
ful of the Park by day, and by night you 
suppose it a place where the underworld 
comes up to court, and naughty men of the 
upper world take ladies driving in taxicabs. 
Probably, too, your mamma thinks as you do, 
so, if you are a girl, you had better seek the 
adventure on the sly — shocking advice, is it 
not? And yet in your heart you do not think 
so, for you know you ought always to spare 
your mother needless pain. 

And the adventure you must surely seek. 
Any one who knows the Park only by day, 
but half knows it, at best. No one who has 
failed to see it under the moon on a summer 
night, a misty summer night, can have any 
conception of the transformation, of the 
fairyland it then becomes in the very heart 
of town, the dream-spot, soaked in beauty, 
out of the pages of an old romance. 

So these two tired run-aways found it, and 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 233 

in silence and wonder they sped on, while the 
dream spell worked around them. 

Well as they knew the Park by day, it 
was strange and mysterious to them now. 
Ever they passed figures on the paths, saw 
other figures dimly, on benches, heard laughs 
and whispers. And the figures were always 
in pairs, one of them usually dressed in white. 
There was nothing strange about it. It 
seemed the natural law of this enchanted 
garden. Presently they came out on an open 
glade. To the left the dark boles of great 
trees climbed up a knoll. To the right the 
moon-blanched green lay quiet under the night 
sky. Ahead of them in the misty distance, 
Cleopatra’s needle rose up like a thin, pale 
spectre. Far off somewhere was a rumble 
of traffic, the never-ending hum of the great 
city. But it was subdued here, like the under- 
tone of surf on a distant beach. Only the 
arc lamps on the drives made blue patches in 
the faint mist, which were out of harmony 
with the scene. Two lovers rose from a 
bench in front of them, and vanished up a 


234 the run-away place 

hidden path among the trees. Two other 
lovers came out of the shadow and took their 
places. Child Marie drew a deep breath, and 
paused. 

“ Did you ever see ‘ A Midsummer Night’s 
Dream ’ on the stage? ” she said. “ Perhaps 
it’s the arc lamps, perhaps it’s because I really 
know this isn’t fairy land, but just our Park, 
that makes it all seem like that dream play 
to me. Just so the lovers move in and out 
of the dim shadows at their cross purposes. 
I keep looking for Puck.” 

Philip laid his hand on her arm. “ Not 
the stage,” he said, “ not the smell of the 
scene-loft, and the false green lights, not 
even if the play is Shakespeare ! Oh, Child 
Marie, this is fairyland!” 

“Yes, Boy, I know it is,” she answered. 
“ I know it is. Only I can’t take it all in 
at first.” 

Slowly they moved to the west, along a 
heavily wooded path where on one side rose 
a bank and on the other was a deep gulley 
where a street crossed the Park, very properly 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 235 

sunk down out of sight. And presently they 
passed up a little incline, in the deep shadow 
of flowery shrubs, and emerged suddenly on 
an open space of stone, gleaming white under 
the moon. 

For a moment they did not realize where 
they were. Then they both uttered a little 
cry. Southward, where the moon rode over 
the tree tops, nothing was visible but the 
dark foliage, and to left and right the trees 
shut out the view. But northward all was 
open to the night sky, and right in front of 
them, cutting its white outlines against the 
purple, rose their tower of stone, the ancient 
tower like a castle out of old romance. They 
sprang upon the platform at its base, for 
the moment quite vacant, and tried the door 
to the tower. It was locked, but though they 
could not reach their magic casement, through 
the larger casement at the base they could 
find framed a picture of the still, dark water, 
the indistinct shore beyond, and the deep 
northern sky, where the Dipper gleamed 
faintly through the haze of heat that rose 


236 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

from the city, reddened on the horizon from 
the invisible lights of Harlem. 

It was a picture bathed in the witchery of 
moonlight on the water, and when they turned 
from it to look out on the gleaming white 
platform, guarded by its parapet of stone, 
the ghost of Hamlet’s father, or some shining 
knight-at-arms, or a lily maid in robes of 
crimson paled by the moon, might have been 
walking there, and they would not have been 
surprised. As they watched, two figures did 
come out of the black shadow of bushes, by 
the path they themselves had come, and 
moved across the white stones to the parapet. 
The man’s arm was about the girl, and, ob- 
livious to the watchers in the shadow of the 
tower, as they leaned on the coping looking 
northward he stooped over and kissed her. 
The girl buried her face in his sleeve, and 
he drew her still closer. 

“ She is so happy, let us leave them alone,” 
said Child Marie. 

So they slipped away, still unobserved, 
though perhaps it would have made no differ- 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 237 

ence to the pair who continued to lean upon 
the parapet. 

And presently, as they walked down a 
broad path flecked with gold, where the 
moonlight sifted through the branches over- 
head, they caught sight of water between the 
trees, water pricked with reflected dots of 
light from the lamps on the other side. 
Hastening on, they crossed Pansy Bridge, and 
on a litttle beach where the water lapped up 
to their feet they found a vacant bench, and 
sat them down to gaze upon the most won- 
derful sight their eyes had ever beheld. 

“ Boy,” said she, drawing a deep breath, 
“I must be literal! Tell me, is this New 
York? Is this our Park? Am I really 
awake? ” 

“ One doesn’t need faith, hope, charity, 
and a child’s power of imagination to find 
this wonderful and lovely ! ” he answered. 
“ Who, riding by over there in an Eighth 
Avenue car, would guess that we, a few hun- 
dred rods away, are in the heart of fairy- 
land!” 


238 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

They turned slowly around on their bench 
and drank in the whole scene. Behind them 
rose a deep, velvet lawn to a grove of great 
trees on a knoll, a silent, vacant lawn, as if 
some stately manor house lay sleeping behind 
those shadows, under the round moon. 
Eastward Pansy Bridge spanned the black 
water, from leafy bank to bank, its still re- 
flection completing the perfect oval. West- 
ward, far above and beyond the pond, the 
line of lights, the trees, rose a great dim 
procession of dark shapes, here and there 
checkered with golden squares of light, the 
vast apartment hotels along the Park front. 
But now, over the trees and under the sky, 
reddened by the invisible lights of the city, 
they were not hotels, they were ghost-ships 
steaming by, monster liners of the night, their 
starboard lights agleam, seen in a dream 
mirage, unreal, ethereal, yet mighty and mag- 
nificent. 

But, looking northward, even they were 
forgot. The boy and girl on the bench saw 
only the Shining Water under the moon, 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 239 

stretching out past the dark eyeot and the 
Forest Perilous, growing more and more 
misty as it receded, till finally it was lost in 
haze and shadow, as if it had no ending. A 
swan moved silently from the bushes on the 
bank, trailing a tiny golden wake across the 
dark water. Somebody on Pansy Bridge, 
some indistinguishable lover, perhaps, was 
whistling softly a commonplace little tune, 
that yet was transformed by the magic of 
the moon, even as the Park itself, into a thing 
wistful and lovely and strange. On the next 
bench a couple sat in silence, or, if they were 
speaking, it was in a whisper too low to be 
heard. And when Philip spoke, he, too, 
spoke in a whisper. 

“ I suppose you never read George Moore’s 
‘Memoirs of My Dead Life’?” he said. 

“ I know enough about them to know it 
wouldn’t do for me to confess it if I had,” 
she smiled. “Why?” 

“ Well,” said he, “ in that book, in ‘ The 
Lovers of Orelay,’ Doris sings Schumann’s 
‘ Nut Tree ’ to Moore, and it inspires him to 


2 4 o THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

call Schubert’s and Schumann’s songs ‘ the 
moonlit lakes and nightingales of music.’ I 
never realized before quite the full truth of 
that description. But now I do — now I 
should like to hear you sing ‘ Die Nussbaum,’ 
and no other song in the world, unless it 
be one of Schubert’s. There’s just this throb 
and ache in their haunting, romantic music, 
just the moonlit unreality, the vague, almost 
too sensuous and too beautiful sadness and 
yearning of this scene.” 

“ That’s grown up language, Boy,” she 
whispered. 

“ This is a grown up scene, Girl,” he 
whispered back. “ Did you ever hear the 
Kneisels play a Schumann quartet?” 

“ Yes,” said she. 

“ Didn’t it make you feel like this? ” 

“ Yes,” said she, more softly still. 

He moved closer to her on the bench. 
One little hand lay on her lap, and he touched 
it. It lay quite still under his touch, and 
her eyes looked steadily out across the misty 
pond. Gradually his own hand closed over 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 241 

it, and it nestled warmly into his palm. A 
thrill passed between them, and their shoul- 
ders leaned together. 

“ The moonlit lakes and nightingales of 
music,” he whispered in her ear; “ such things 
be in the world, dear little Girl. See the 
moon mist on the Shining Water, and hear 
the crickets in the grass. Beauty and dreams 
and passion, loveliness that aches with its 
own fullness, right in the midst of our hot, 
dirty, toiling town. Poor little girl who is 
so tired, so tired, let it rest on your eyes, and 
your ears, and your heart, till you forget ! ” 

She leaned more heavily on his shoulder, 
but made no sound. Stooping forward, he 
looked in her face, and saw the mist shining 
in her eyes. And then an impulse surged 
over him, sweet, mighty, irresistible. He 
gathered her close in his arms, and kissed 
her. She buried her face on his sleeve, as 
the girl had done at the tower, and sobbed. 

Presently she raised her face to his, and 
the tears were shining on her cheeks where 
the moonlight struck them. 


242 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ Kiss me again I ” she whispered. 

And then she rose and stood before him 
gravely. 

“Boy,” she said, “I must go home! ” 

He reached for her hands, but she put 
them behind her back. 

“ No, no,” said she hastily. “ I must go 
home! You must take me to a car! ” 

Still he remained seated. “ Girl,” he 
asked, “who are you?” 

“ You know — Marie,” she answered. 

“ No, we are grown up now, — who are 
you? ” 

She shook her head. “ You mustn’t ask, — 
you musn’t ask.” 

“Mustn’t ask!” he cried. “Why, now 
I must ask! ” 

“ Oh, no, no, no ! ” she answered. “ Be 
Child Philip, and let me be Marie! Don’t 
you see, don’t you understand? It can’t be 
anything else. That’s who we are in the 
Run-away Place; and all the rest doesn’t 
matter.” 

“Doesn’t matter?” he said, rising and 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 243 

taking her shoulders between his hands. 
“ Doesn’t matter ? Of course it matters now, 
for I love you ! ” 

The girl shivered at the words. “ I — 
I — you — I mustn’t see you again ! ” she said. 

“ You shall see me again,” he answered. 
“You shall see me again, to-morrow! And 
you shall tell me now who you are! ” 

The girl looked up in his face, quivering 
between the hard grip of his hands. A tear 
still shone on her cheek, and her eyes, in 
the moonlight, were misty. 

“ Would you love me any more if you 
knew?” she asked. “Isn’t it sweeter to 
have loved me without knowing? I’ve found 
it so!” 

He drew her toward him, kissing her again, 
and her lips answered his. 

“ You are mine, mine, mine, whoever you 
are ! ” he whispered. “ But we are going 
back into the world now, together, and we 
must know.” 

“ Could you take me if you didn’t know? ” 
she breathed, her face close to his. “ Could 


244 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

you take me, this very night, and run far 
away, farther even than this shore of the 
Shining Water, farther than the last light 
of the town, far away from the heat and the 
worry and the work ? ” 

“ Do you mean it? ” he cried, rising on her 
words like wings. “ I’ll take you northward, 
over the moonlit miles, across streams and 
valleys, up, up, into the cool, high hills, where 
the breeze sweeps and the stars shine and 
the whippoorwills shall sing our nuptial song ! 
Come, my Beloved! ” 

She wrenched herself from his embrace. 
“ Stop, Boy, stop ! ” she exclaimed. “ What 
am I letting you say? Oh, you don’t know, 
you don’t know. You are freedom, happi- 
ness, the joy-of-life, everything! You’ve 
stolen away my senses, you and the moonlight. 
I’m going now; you mustn’t follow. No- 
body will molest me. You mustn’t follow, 
I say. Please, if you love me!” 

“ You shall not go till you tell me who you 
are, or where you live, or when I can see 
you,” he cried, detaining her. “ Do you 


THE TOUCH OF SCHUMANN 245 

think I’m going to give you up this way? 
Do you?” He held her wrist almost 
roughly. “ What do you take me for? ” 

“ Day after to-morrow, then, the summer- 
house, at four,” she answered. “ Oh, please 
let me go ! ” 

He searched her face hungrily, and her 
eyes fell, as if they dared not meet his. Then 
he dropped her wrist. 

“ Very well,” he said, “ as you wish.” 

But when he had released her, she did not 
stir for a moment. Then she came forward, 
kissed his shoulder, and sped swiftly away 
down the shore of the Shining Water. He 
watched her disappear into the shadows. 
After she was gone he sat down on the bench, 
pulled a pipe out of his pocket, filled and lit 
it, and stared moodily into the moon mist 
up the lake. Presently he became aware of 
the harsh roar and rattle of cars over on 
the avenue. The pond smelled stale. Two 
men passed along the little beach in front of 
him talking loudly with frequent oaths. The 
touch of Schumann had vanished. He got 


246 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

up and walked hastily out of the Park, his 
soul filled with doubts and wonders. Once 
in the street, her kiss seemed as unreal as the 
fairyland behind him, spun out of dream- 
stuff. When he reached home his head ached 
dully, and his body was exhausted. He was 
like a man in whom the whole tide of being 
was at dead ebb. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE PESSIMISTIC PELICAN 

AT quarter of four on the appointed day 
he passed by Victory without a glance 
and almost ran up the incline to the summer- 
house. The tide of life had flooded back 
again now, and was beating high against 
the shores. The minutes were hours till she 
came. He seized her hand, and looked hard 
into her eyes. They met his with a light he 
had never seen before, as if some shade had 
been raised, the ultimate reservation put aside. 
He knew without words that she was his. A 
song sang in his heart as he rested his hands 
on her shoulders, holding her away from him 
to smile into her face. There were hollows 
in her cheeks, and the sight of them hurt him. 

“ Tired little face ! ” he said. “ Can we 
go soon up into the hills where the wind shall 
blow back the color? ” 


248 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

“ Happy face now! ” she answered, “ for 
it has dared to c follow the gleam.’ ” 

They moved northward slowly into the 
heart of the Park. “ Do you, do you, more 
than anything in the world?” she asked, 
squeezing his arm. 

“ More than anything in the world,” he 
answered, “ or anything beyond it!” 

“ Then I can tell you, and you’ll under- 
stand. You always understand. I had to 
tell him last night. Oh, Boy, it was not easy. 
I fear I hurt him, you can understand that. 
But you cannot understand how I hurt myself, 
because you are only a boy after all, if you 
are a wonderful one. Now you know why 
I couldn’t listen to your bugle at the gates. 
And now you know how wicked I was even 
to let the little girl out to play with you. 
Did you never guess? And didn’t you de- 
spise me for it? ” 

“ Despise you? ” he replied, drawing close 
to her. “ How little you understand ! De- 
spise you for going at your happiness ? Per- 
haps I did guess, a little. I won’t say that 


THE PESSIMISTIC PELICAN a 49 

I didn’t. But I loved you. I loved you so 
much that I knew in my heart the walls would 
crumble. And I waited.” 

“ I should have been awfully jealous if I’d 
guessed such a thing about you,” said Marie, 
tucking her arm for an instant in his. 

He shook his head. “ No you wouldn’t,” 
he said. “ Jealousy isn’t the complement of 
love; it has nothing to do with love. It is 
a complement of personal vanity. The 
‘ pangs of jealousy ’ are really the pains of 
wounded personal pride. Perhaps I was 
tempted to be jealous, to hate him. But I 
had to put such feelings away from me, for 
they are a sign of smallness, and I cannot be 
small where you are concerned, Marie. I 
cannot have anything petty in our love.” 

She pressed his arm, in silent reply. 

“ But won’t you please be a little bit sorry 
for him, then?” she asked. 

Philip shook his head. 

“ No,” he answered, “ I can’t be sorry for 
him, either. Maybe I could if I knew him; 
maybe I should not have taken you if I had 


2So THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

known him, though I doubt it. I guess I’ve 
got what Ibsen calls a ‘ Viking conscience.’ 
When I see my happiness I go straight for it. 
If I should stop to pity by the way, the bird 
might escape; and, after all, to catch the bird 
is success in life. Maybe that’s a child’s 
philosophy, or rather instinct. But I can’t 
help it. God made me a free thing, and when 
my heart’s singing a song of you, a triumph 
song, there’s no room for any other note.” 

“ The ‘ Viking conscience ! ’ ” said the girl, 
“ Yes, that’s it ! That’s what I have been 
striving toward all my life! God tried to 
make me a free thing, too, I guess, only he 
made me a woman, so that his work was but 
half done. That night, by the Shining 
Water, the old Viking struggled up. I dared 
to dream of flying with you. Would you 
have taken me?” 

“ Yes,” said he. 

“Without knowing who I am?” 

“ Without knowing who you are ! ” 

“ And thought no wrong? ” 

“ And thought no wrong! ” 


THE PESSIMISTIC PELICAN 251 

“ Ah, but I would not have dared to go, 
even now I would not dare to go. Yet there 
would be no wrong, would there, for we love 
each other? ” 

Their hands met at their sides, and for 
a moment they forgot the nursemaids on the 
benches. 

“ You see,” she continued, “ I’m a little 
cowardy-custard still, and I dread the hour 
of taking you home. All my life I’ve been 
hedged round with dear proprieties. I love 
some of them very much, when they are 
persons. But I could not let them stand be- 
tween me and you, never that, Boy! I’ve 
yielded to them year in and year out, they’ve 
sunk into the nature of me, so that sometimes 
I’ve quite forgotten even to flutter against 
the bars. But when I went home that last 
night I — I — well, there was no fluttering 
about it. I stood at the bedroom window and 
looked out across the housetops that were 
all shining in the moon, and just knew that — 
I should have to have you, or die! Yes, 
Boy, it’s as bad as that ! I guess there’s only 


a 5 2 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

one thing will give a woman a ‘ Viking con- 
science ’ — love. You see, I knew at last that 
I loved you ! ” 

“ Didn’t you know it till then?” 

“ Perhaps I did,” she smiled, “ but I hadn’t 
admitted it, even to myself. I had just run 
to the Park to meet you like a thirsty deer 
to the pool. Besides, it was all so sudden — 
only a few weeks. Do you realize that ? ” 

“And he, didn’t you love him?” asked 
Philip. 

She shook her head. “ No,” she answered. 
“ I wonder if you can understand? Oh, you 
must understand ! You must know that you 
are everything, now, always, forever! He 
was one of the proprieties. He was like 
church on Sunday or the family birthday 
parties. He was dear and good and con- 
ventional, and he hadn’t been a boy for ever 
so many years. He had forgotten how to 
be a boy and play with me. Sometimes, when 
I came home from work — it’s hard work 
down in the Settlement, that uses my grown-up 
self all up — something in me wanted to be 


THE PESSIMISTIC PELICAN 253 

played with, but there was no little playmate, 
nobody to meet the need. Always everybody 
would be talking serious matters, and on 
Sunday nights they sang hymns in the parlor, 
till I’ve seen the time when I could have 
screamed, and would have, too, if there’d 
been anybody to know why I did it! Boy, 
some Sunday I want to stay quite away from 
church, and play golf all day, and go hear 
a vaudeville concert in the evening! ” 

“ I’ll never ask you to go to church but 
the once! ” he laughed. “But,” he added, 

seriously, “ if you didn’t love him ” 

“Ah!” said she, “I thought I did. I 
thought I knew what love was. Even I al- 
most thought that I was happy. Sometimes 
I think that women don’t know so much as 
they are credited with, even intuitively. And 
even when they do, they cheat themseves. 
They know they want to love, and be loved, 
and that need, that desire, drives them into 
terrible compromises. Maybe they don’t 
know any better, maybe only deep down in 
their hearts is there any hint that what they 


254 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

are cherishing is but the poor pale shadow. 
Heaven help them if it’s too late when the 
reality walks into their lives and suddenly the 
veil falls from their eyes, and the passion 
sweeps over them ! Boy, I’ll tell you every- 
thing — or almost everything! I began to 
doubt that day in the tower, when I found I 
was jealous of your lady on the other side of 
the hill — I began to doubt because I was 
jealous, and because you thrilled me, and 
because I let you thrill me, and because I 
promised to come again, even after that. 
You see, I did have a little of the ‘ Viking 
conscience ! ’ ” 

“ Dear girl,” he said, “ you too know 
that just to catch the bird is success.” 

“ Yes, I know it — now ! ” She pressed his 
arm. “ And then, under the spell of the 
moon, your Schumann moon, I just forgot 
everything, because I saw the bird fluttering 
so near my hand, and I reached for it. Oh, 
it was good to be free, to be wild, to go 
straight for your happiness! I knew when 
you kissed me, and I returned your kiss, that 


THE PESSIMISTIC PELICAN 255 

I had never even dreamed what love is. I 
didn’t know before it was that , that there 
could be anything like that! It swept over 
me like a wave, and even if I did run away 
from you, Boy, I ran on air. My running 
away was the last gasp in me, I think, of the 
theory I was reared in — that anything so 
pleasant must be wicked! ” 

She finished with a little laugh. 

They had come to a pause in front of the 
large bird cage in the Zoo, their steps having 
strayed unheeded. 

“ You do, don’t you? ” she suddenly asked 
again, leaning hard against his side. 

His fingers sought hers. “ More than 
anything in the world,” he answered. 

The pink pelican was waddling just on the 
other side of the net. He looked up at the 
words and regarded the pair solemnly. 

“ Pink Pelican,” said Philip, “ this is 
Marie, my Betrothed. We ran away and 
fell in love, which we hadn’t oughter, not 
being properly introduced, and, besides, she 
thought she loved another man.” 


256 THE RUN-AWAY PLACE 

The solemn bird made no sound, no mo- 
tion, but continued to regard them fixedly. 

“ We are very happy, Mr. Pelican,” said 
she. “ You might look as though you sym- 
pathized.” She leaned her head lightly 
against Philip’s shoulder as she spoke. 

The pelican deliberately turned away from 
them, drew one foot up under him, bent his 
long pink neck back between his wings, hid 
his head under the feathers, wabbled once or 
twice to get a perfect balance, and went to 
sleep. 

“ He’s a pessimist,” said Philip. 

“Poor, foolish bird!” said Child Marie, 
with a happy little laugh. 

When they came out upon Victory leading 
General Sherman down the Avenue, it sud- 
denly occurred to both that something had 
still been omitted. 

“ Mayn’t I know whom Pm going to 
marry?” he asked. 

“ And I what my name is going to be? ” 
she answered. 

So, solemnly, with great formality, they 


THE PESSIMISTIC PELICAN 257 

exchanged cards, and laughed, for they were 
neighbors, and climbed aboard a southward 
going ’bus. 

“ Good bye, dear Run-away Place,” she 
whispered, looking back. “ We caught the 
bird of happiness in you ! ” 


THE END 



A NEW NOVEL OF UNUSUAL MERIT 


H. H. BASHFORD’S 

THE PILGRIMS’ MARCH 

3 rd printing. $1 .50 

A happily written English story with a theme of 
wide appeal. A likable youth with artistic tendencies 
is converted, for a time at least, to the ways, and 
works, and daughter of a puritan family. The situa- 
tion is worked out with humor and in an atmosphere 
of good breeding. 

“A really charming narrative. They’re all very real, these 
good people, even the most lightly sketched among them, 
while Broggers, and lisping Chris, the good old Lomax, and 
sweet, human Margaret, and brave, brave Betty, these are 
altogether too nice and wholesomely lovable to shut away 
with the memory of their story’s single reading. There’s too 
much to be learned and enjoyed to think of perusing but 
once.” — Chicago Record-Herald. 

“ Those critics who have asserted that all possible plots 
have been used will be compelled to retreat. More than one 
noteworthy figure, carefully finished and consistent and 
adding to the general merit of a remarkable first novel.” — 
The Living Age. 

“ Extremely clever and charming. It reminds one here 
and there of the manner of De Morgan, which is praise 
enough for anybody.” — Wm. Lyon Phelps , Professor of 
English Literature at Yale. 

“Somewhat of the temperament of Miss Sinclair’s ‘ The 
Divine Fire.’ . . . One of those unusual novels which 
gather force as they advance. Will be one of the notable 
books of the season.” — Washington (D. C.) Star. 

“ A rarely interesting novel.” — Hartford Courant. 


*** If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will 
send, from time to time, information about their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

4 WEST 33d STREET NEW YORK 


WILLIAM DH MORGAN’S SOMEHOW GOOD 

The dramatic story of some modern English people in a 
strange situation. $1.75. 

“A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range 
of fiction.” — The Nation. 

"Dear familiar friends, companions, playmates of his are these men and 
women and children, and he tells you about them so vividly and tenderly 
that they must be your friends and familiars, too — for their mere charm 
and their humanness’ sake — in their jests and idle pastimes, not less than 
in their tragedies and joys. ... If you love your Thackeray, you may 
chance it safely enough — and have your reward.” — New York Times 
Review. 

“Our older novelists (Dickens and Thackeray) will have to look to their 
laurels, for the new one is fast proving himself their equal. A higher 
quality of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of any other novelist 
now living and active in either England or America. Absolutely masterly. 
The plot is extremely ingenious and complicated.” — The Dial. 


WILLIAM DE MORGAN’S ALICE-FOR=SHORT 

The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and 
family. Seventh printing. $1.75. 

" Really worth reading and praising . . . will be hailed as a masterpiece. 
If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter 
century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan.” — Boston 
Transcript. 

"It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, interesting, over- 
crowded books. . . . Page by page the new book is as rich, piquant, and 
interesting as its predecessor. . . . Everywhere are wit, learning, and 
scholarship . . . the true creative imagination. . . . Will be remembered 
as Dickens’s novels are remembered.” — Springfield, Republican. 


WILLIAM DE MORGAN’S JOSEPH VANCE 

A novel of life near London in the 50’s. Eighth printing. 
$1.75. 

"The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since Mr. Mere- 
dith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first great English novel 
that has appeared in the twentieth century.” — Lewis Melville in New 
York Times Saturday Review. 

"If the reader likes both ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘Peter Ibbetson,’ he 
can find the two books in this one.” — The Independent. 


*** If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, 
from time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


NEW YORK 


By Ramsey Benson. 


A LORD OF LANDS 

326 pp., i2mo. $1.50. 

The unusual and convincing narrative of the experiences 
of a man of good sense, with wages of $50 a month and five 
children, following his determination to leave the city and 
farm it in the Northwest. 

“A book of real adventure— an adventure in living. More thrilling 
than an African jungle story, and not lacking in humor and pathos. 
Nothing is more wonderful than the way the commonest details con- 
tribute to the homely interest, just as long ago we were fascinated by 
the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’ — The Independent. 

“Does for the humble workingman what ‘The Fat of the Land’ did 
for the well-to-do. Will appeal instantly and throughout its entire 
length to the lover of the outdoor life.” — Boston Transcript. 

“ Unique in literature . . . holds many fascinations . . . told 
with the utmost art.”— San Francisco Chronicle. 

OVER AGAINST GREEN PEAK By Zephine Humphrey. 

276 pp., i2mo. $1.25 net, by mail $1.33. 

The homely experiences of a bright young woman and her 
Aunt Susan, not to mention the “hired girl,” in making a 
New England home, 

“ Verily it is a delicious piece of work and that last chapter is a genu- 
ine poem. Best of all is the charming sincerity of the book.”— George 
Cary Eggleston. 

“ A record of country life far above the average of its class in the 
qualities which go to make such a book enjoyable. . . . The author 
sees the things that are worth seeing, and she has a rather unusual com- 
mand of simple, dignified and effective English.” — The Nation. 

“Characters who are individualized and humor that is gentle and 
cheery . . . the unmistakable air of literary grace and refinement.” 
-The Outlook. 


AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS By Eliza R. Scidmore. 

Journal of a Russian Prisoner’s Wife in Japan. 

Illustrated from photographs. 359 pp., i2mo. $1.50 net, 
by mail $1.62. 

“ In a class by itself. For sheer graphic force it has a kinship with 
Kipling’s ‘ Soldiers Three.’ A brave love story, bravely told. Epic not 
only in subject, but in treatment .”— Philip Tillinghast in The Forum. 

“ A remarkable book, and one that places the'author in the very front 
rank of living writers of fiction .”— London Academy. 

“ First worthy romance with scenes laid in our Eastern islands. The 
love story is the real thing .” — New York Times Review. 


*** If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will 
send, from time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

M WEST 33d STREET NEW YORK 


MRS. E. L. VOYNICH’S THE GADFLY 

An intense romance of the Italian rising against the Austrians 
early in the nineteenth century. Twenty-first printing. $1.25. 

“ One of the most powerful novels of the decade.”— New York Tribune. 

ANTHONY HOPES THE PRISONER OF ZENDA 

Being the history of three months in the life of an English 
gentleman. Illustrated by C. D. Gibson. Fifty-first printing. 
$1.50. 


ANTHONY HOPE’S RUPERT OF HENTZAU 

A sequel to “ The Prisoner of Zenda.” Illustrated by C. D. 
Gibson. Twenty-first printing. $1.50. 

These stirring romances established a new vogue in fiction and 
are among the most widely-read novels. Each has been success- 
fully dramatized. 

C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON’S THE LIGHTNING 
CONDUCTOR 

New illustrated edition. Twenty-first printing. $1.50. 

A humorous love story of a beautiful American and a gallant 
Englishman who stoops to conquer. Two almost human auto- 
mobiles play prominent parts. There are picturesque scenes in 
Provence, Spain and Italy. 

" Altogether the best automobile story of which we have knowledge, and 
might serve almost as a guide-book for highway travel from Paris to Sicily.’ * 
—Atlantic Monthly. 

C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON’S THE PRINCESS 
PASSES 

Illustrated by Edward Penfield. Eighth printing. $1.50. 

“ The authors have duplicated their success with ‘The Lightning Con- 
ductor.’ . . . Unusually absorbing .”— Boston Transcript. 

D. D. WELLS’ HER LADYSHIP’S ELEPHANT 

This humorous Anglo-American tale made an instantaneous 
hit. Eighteenth printing. $1.25. 

“ He is probably funny because he cannot help it. . . . Must consent 
to be regarded as a benefactor of his kind without responsibility .”— The 
Nation. 


* If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, 
from time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS (X-’07) 


HEW YORK 


FIVE DELIGHTFUL ANTHOLOGIES 

POEMS FOR TRAVELERS 

Compiled by Mary R. J. DuBois. 16mo. Cloth, $1.50; 
leather, ^2.50. 

Covers France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and 
Greece in some three hundred poems (nearly one-third of them 
by Americans) from about one hundred and thirty poets. All 
but some forty of these poems were originally written in English. 


The three following books are uniform, with full gilt 
flexible covers and pictured cover linings. 16mo. Each, cloth. 
$1.50 ; leather, $2.50. 

THE POETIC OLD WORLD 

Compiled by Miss L. H. Humphrey. 

Covers Europe, including Spain, Belgium and the British Isles, 
in some two hundred poems from about ninety poets. Some 
thirty, not originally written in English, are given in both the 
original and the best available translation. 

THE OPEN ROAD 

A little book for wayfarers. Compiled by E. V. Lucas. 

Some 125 poems from over 60 authors, including Fitzgerald, 
Shelley, Shakespeare, Kenneth Grahame, Stevenson, Whitman, 
Browning, Keats, Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, 
William Morris, Maurice Hewlett, Isaak Walton, William 
Barnes, Herrick, Dobson, Lamb, Milton, Whittier, etc., etc. 

“A very charming book from cover to cover.” — Dial. 

THE FRIENDLY TOWN 

A little book for the urbane, compiled by E. V. Lucas. 

Over 200 selections in verse and prose from 100 authors, 
including : James R. Lowell, Burroughs, Herrick, Thackeray, 
Scott, Vaughn, Milton, Cowley, Browning, Stevenson, Henley, 
Longfellow, Keats, Swift, Meredith, Lamb, Lang, Dobson, 
Fitzgerald, Pepys, Addison, Kemble, Boswell, Holmes, Walpole, 
and Lovelace. 

‘ Would have delighted Charles Lamb .” — The Nation. 


A BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN 

Over 200 poems representing some 80 authors. Compiled h> 
E. V. Lucas. With decorations by F. D. Bedford. Revised 
edition. $2.00. Library edition, $1.00 net. 

‘‘We know of no other anthology for children so complete and well 
arranged. ’ Critic. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY P S S ?S 


MAY SINCLAIR’S THE HELPMATE 

A story of married life. Third printing. $1.50. 

“ An advance upon * The Divine Fire.’ London Times. 

*’ The one novel on the divorce question.”— Boston Transcript. 

“ A noteworthy book. . . . There are things said in these pages, and 
said very plainly, which need to be said, which are rarely enough said — 
almost never so well said. The book contains unforgettable scenes, persons, 
phrases, and such a picture of the hardness of a good woman as exists 
nowhere else in our literature-”— New York Times Saturday Review. 

" Masterly . . . artistic to the core.”— Boston Advertiser. 

“ No criticism of trifles can leave in doubt the great distinction of her 
craftsmanship. Very certainly she must have made her reputation by this 
book, if it had not been already won.”— Punch (London). 

MAY SINCLAIR’S THE DIVINE FIRE 

A story of a London poet. 13th printing. $1.50. 

” In all our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 
* The Divine Fire.’ ” — Mary Moss in The Atlantic Monthly. 

“A full-length study of the poetic temperament, framed in a varied and 
curiously interesting environment, and drawn with a firmness of hand that 
excites one’s admiration. , . . Moreover, a real distinction of style, besides 
being of absorbing interest from cover to cover.” — Dial. 

“ I find her book the most remarkable that I have read for many years . n 
—Owen Seaman in Punch (London). 

MAY SINCLAIR’S THE TYSONS . . 4th printing. $1.50 

“ Maintains a clinging grip upon the mind and senses, compelling one to 
acknowledge the author’s genius.”— Chicago Record-Herald. 

MAY SINCLAIR’S SUPERSEDED . . 2nd printing. $1.25 

” Makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little English woman 
may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen.”— New York Sun. 

MAY SINCLAIR’S AUDREY CRAVEN 2nd printing. $1.50 

“ It ranks high in originality, interest and power. . . . Audrey is a dis- 
tinct creation.” — Times Review. 


* If the reader will send his name and address the publisher will send, 
from time to time, information regarding their new books. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS (x-’07) KEW YORK 


STIRRING MYSTERY STORIES 

ANGEL ESQUIRE 

By Edgar Wallace. 12mo, $1.50. 

A rattling good detective story in which an inexperienced girl 
has to contend with three unscrupulous and daring criminals for 
millions strangely bequeathed to one of the four. 

“Inspiring originality. Mr. Edgar Wallace has achieved the impossible. 
He has written a detective story having for its hero a type absolutely new. 
Moreover, to make his book completely fascinating, he puts before his hero 
a problem of refreshing fantasticality. The story grows breathlessly excit- 
ing. Through its thrilling developments, Angel Esquire moves with an airy 
aplomb that is irresistible. All the time he is smiling, full of quaintness 
and humor.” — N. Y. Tribune. 


By Burton E. Stevenson 
THAT AFFAIR AT ELIZABETH 

Another story in which Lester, the young lawyer, and Godfrey, 
the reporter, play the part of detectives in unraveling a modern 
mystery. $1.50. 

“A well-constructed detective story . . . surrounding the disappearance 
of a bride a few minutes before the hour set for her wedding. A murder ia 
committed at about the time of her vanishing, and the two stories are vig- 
orously interwoven, being worked out to a surprising conclusion.”— 
Chicago Post. 

“ Starts with a capital situation. . . . The reader is utterly unable to 
guess at the secret.” — N. Y. Tribune. 

THE MARATHON MYSTERY 

The story of a strange happening in a New York apartment 
house, and at a Long Island house party. The plot is unusual, 
full of surprises; the handling is masterful. It has been repub- 
lished in England and Germany. With five scenes in color by 
Eliot Keen. $1.50. 

“The author has stepped at once to the front ranks among American 
writers of detective tales ... a yarn with genuine thrills.”— -Bookman. 

“ Distinctly an interesting story — one of the sort that the reader will not 
lay down before he goes to bed.” — New York Sun. 

THE HOLLADAY CASE 

This remarkable story begins with the finding of a New York 
banker stabbed to death in his office. Suspicion falls on his 
daughter. A kidnapping and pursuit over seas follow. The 
story contains a minimum of horror and a maximum of ingenu- 
ity, and the mystery is kept up to the next ^to last chapter. 
With frontispiece by Eliot Keen. $1.25. 

“ A good detective story, and it is the better because the part of the hero 
is not filled by a member of the profession. . . . The reader will not want 
to out the book down until he has reached the last page. Most ingeniously 
constructed and well written into the bargain.” — N. Y. Tribune. 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS 


NEW YORK 


BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS By W. A. Locy. 

By the Professor of Biology in Northwestern University. 
123 illustrations. 8vo. $2.75 net, by mail $2.88. 

41 Entertainingly written, and, better than any other existing single 
work in any language, gives the layman a clear idea of the scope and 
development of the broad science of biology.*’— The Dial. 

CANADIAN TYPES OF THE OLD REGIME By C. W. Colby. 

By the Professor of History in McGill University. 18 illus- 
trations. 8vo. $2.75 net, by mail $2.90. 

“ A light and graceful style. Not only interesting reading, but gives 
as clear a notion of what the old regime was at its best as may be found 
anywhere in a single volume .”— Literary Digest. 

THE BUILDERS OF UNITED ITALY By R. S. Holland. 

With 8 portraits. Large i2mo. $2.00 net, by mail $2.13. 
Historical biographies of Alfieri, Manzoni, Gioberti, Manin, 
Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel. 

41 Popular but not flimsy.”— The Nation. 


THE ITAUANS OF TO-DAY By Ren6 Bazin. 

By the author of “The Nun/* etc. Translated by Wm. 
Marchant. $1.25 net, by mail $1.35. 

*‘A most readable book. He touches upon everything.”— Boston 
Transcript. 


DARWINISM TO-DAY By V. L. Kellogg. 

By the author of “ American Insects,” etc. 8vo. $2.00 net, 
by mail $2.12. 

44 Can write in English as brightly and as clearly as the oldtime French- 
men. . . . In his text he explains the controversy so that the plain 
man may understand it, while in the notes he adduces the evidence that 
the specialist requires. ... A brilliant book that deserves general 
attention .”— New York Sun. 


*** If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will 
send, from time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


34 WEST 33d STREET 


NEW YORK 

























\ 














I 








































































MAY 22 IW9 



















































































• I 









































































































LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


□0D14A0043A 





